One source of category color for the whole network — the design primitive that makes cards, pills, spines, and markers coherent across every surface.
nicheColor() (includes/niche-colors.php) is the single source of category color network-wide. Category → hue, niche → shade within that hue. Every surface that shows a business or a niche — the shared business card (spine + category pill), directory chips, map markers, category pages — draws from this ONE function, so a "food" place looks like food everywhere and an "automotive" place looks like automotive everywhere, without per-surface color logic.
Coherent category color is what makes the network feel like one system instead of many pages. It is a design PRIMITIVE (like the design standards registry and the shared card): change the mapping in one place and the whole network updates. The star rating uses a fixed gold (#f5a623) so ratings read consistently regardless of category.
Consuming code destructures [$accent, $soft] (a strong accent + a soft tint for backgrounds/pills). New surfaces that display a niche must call nicheColor() rather than inventing a palette — that is how a new card, a new directory view, or the "More places nearby" cards (network growth) stay on-system for free. Next horizons: category-page theming and colored map markers driven by the same source.