The directory still says Lights
The card on the panel still says Lights. That label is from 2019. The dock was rewired in 2024. Nobody wrote the modification down.
That is the whole problem, and it is not a vocabulary problem. The next person who opens this panel will trust the directory. They will kill the wrong circuit, or they will not kill the one they meant to kill. The written procedure is current. The field is not.
Occupancy is not a circuit
Do not write Dad's office on a breaker.
NEC 408.4(A) is explicit about this. No circuit shall be described in a manner that depends on transient conditions of occupancy. EC&M uses "Dad's Office" as the example. Mike Holt's forum uses Janie's lights, Paul's office, Dave's room. Same fail. Dad moves. Janie sells the house in December. The office that used to be Paul's is a guest room. The directory is now a rumor.
Location survives occupancy. Northeast bedroom receptacles. Kitchen lighting, east wall. First-floor furnace. Those names still mean something after the people change.
A compass rose is better than a first name. Buildings do get moved, and then north is a lie too. For a site-built house that has not been on a truck, north bedroom is still more honest than Dave's room.
Lights and Plugs are catch-alls
On Mike Holt's forum, an electrician asked whether a residential service directory could just say Lights and Plugs for the general circuits, with dedicated kitchen and bath called out separately. The inspector said no. The electrician could not find a sentence in the codebook that used those two words as banned terms.
The inspector was still right.
NEC 408.4(A) does not publish a naughty list. It requires a clear, evident, and specific purpose, with enough detail that each circuit can be distinguished from all the others. If you have more than one general lighting circuit, Lights does not distinguish anything. If six breakers say Lights, the directory has told you nothing you could act on with the cover open.
Article 100: a plug is the thing on the cord. The circuit serves receptacles, not plugs. Name the location. Kitchen receptacles. North wall receptacles. Garage door receptacles.
Pass: Lights equals kitchen lighting. Fail: Lights equals whatever still glows.
Pass: Plugs equals north wall receptacles. Fail: Plugs equals anything with a cord.
On a service change in an older house, one circuit may jump from a bedroom wall to the kitchen to an exterior receptacle to a disposal. Saying general lights and receptacles there is meaningless. That mess is why the language in 408.4(A) exists: so the authority having jurisdiction can require words that actually describe the work.
Approved degree of detail is the AHJ's call. That is not a loophole for Lights on every 15A. It is the inspector's authority to reject a directory that would not help the next person.
What 408.4 actually requires
Every circuit and every circuit modification shall be legibly identified as to its clear, evident, and specific purpose or use.
Read the second half twice. Circuit modification. The 2024 dock rewire is a modification. If the directory still says Lights from 2019, the modification was never identified. The install can be perfect and the directory still fails.
The identification has to be specific enough to tell circuits apart. Spare positions that contain unused overcurrent devices or switches shall be described accordingly. Spare is not blank. Blank is a vacant slot in someone's head. Spare is a breaker sitting there, unused, named.
The directory lives on the face of the panel, inside the door, or in an approved location adjacent to the door. For switchboards and switchgear, identification is at each switch or circuit breaker.
Later NEC language (the 2023 restatement in 408.4(A)) tightens the same idea: legible and permanent; clear, evident, and specific, including spares; not dependent on occupancy; abbreviations and symbols explained.
EC&M, drawing on Mike Holt's Article 408 material, puts it in a list: located at the device or on the directory; clear and specific; enough detail that circuits are not confused; occupancy names fail; abbreviations get a key.
This is not decoration. Article 408 identification exists so maintenance, repair, upgrades, and emergencies do not start with a guess.
Why OSHA cares at the breaker
OSHA 1910.303(f) is the why you mark purpose at the disconnect.
Each disconnecting means for motors and appliances shall be legibly marked to indicate its purpose, unless the purpose is evident from location and arrangement. Each service, feeder, and branch circuit, at its disconnecting means or overcurrent device, shall be legibly marked to indicate its purpose, unless that purpose is evident. The marking has to survive the environment.
NEC tells you how to write the directory. OSHA tells you why the workplace needs the same information on the thing you are about to open. You mark it so the next person knows what they are killing before they kill it. If the purpose is not evident from standing in front of the gear, the mark has to say it.
A directory that says Lights, dated 2019, with a 2024 dock on that breaker, is not a purpose that is evident. It is a purpose that used to be true.
What to write instead
Do not start from the people. Start from the load and the place.
Kitchen small-appliance, left wall. Garage door opener and exterior receptacles, west. Attic furnace. Spare.
If two circuits serve the same room, split them: master bedroom lighting, master bedroom receptacles. If a circuit mixes rooms, say so: master bed and bed hall. If master is a matter of opinion in a house with two similar bedrooms, use location.
Handwritten pencil that smears is how directories die. Printed, durable marks match the durability language in both the NEC and OSHA 1910.303(f)(3).
When the dock gets rewired, the directory gets rewired in the same visit. That is the modification 408.4 is talking about. The file and the field have to be updated together or the next opener inherits a lie.
The written one and the live one
The directory is the written procedure. The 2024 rewire is the field note. Most panels only keep the first. The second lives in the person who did the work, until they are out.
Docly is how you keep the written procedure and the field notes in the same answer, and you label which one you used. If the workspace does not have enough to answer, it says so instead of guessing.