The scheme describes three phases: price sits in a range, then sharply exits past one edge and returns, then moves the opposite way. In the vocabulary of the approach these are accumulation, manipulation and distribution; AMD for short.
As with the rest of Smart Money, it pays to separate the observable geometry from the explanation laid over it.
What is visible on the chart
Three things, all checkable:
A range. A stretch where price moves between two levels with no clear direction. Its boundaries are visible and its duration measurable.
A pierce past an edge. Price goes beyond a boundary of the range and returns inside. This is the same event as a liquidity sweep — the level was touched by a wick but not broken on a close.
A directional exit. After the return, price leaves in the direction opposite the pierce and closes beyond the far boundary.
That sequence does occur on charts; it can be found and pointed at.
What stays narration
The names of the phases. "Accumulation" presumes somebody was building a position; "manipulation" that the pierce was deliberate, to collect other people's stops; "distribution" that what was built is being handed out.
None of those claims is testable on a chart. You cannot see who traded, in what size or with what intent. A pierce past a range boundary looks the same whether it was "arranged" or simply happened.
That does not make the explanation false. It means the geometry and the explanation have different standing: the first can be checked, the second cannot.
How it differs from Wyckoff's schematics
Wyckoff described similar logic long before the term SMC existed, and in more detail, resting on volume and on the behaviour of the spread.
The practical difference is that volume is part of Wyckoff's scheme while the SMC retelling usually does not use it at all: everything is built on price geometry. So "AMD" is easier to apply on an instrument with no reliable volume — and there is nothing there to confirm it with.
Where people get confused
Reading the scheme as a schedule. "There was manipulation, so distribution comes next" — a pierce does not imply a directional exit follows. A range can be pierced both ways in turn and stay a range.
Finding the scheme after the fact. On history the phases mark up easily because the outcome is known. In real time you have a range and a pierce, and the third phase is a guess.
Calling every pierce a manipulation. Piercing a range boundary is an ordinary event, and most often nothing notable follows it.
What to do with it
Use the geometry and do not transfer the confidence of the explanation onto it. A range and a pierce are observable facts, useful for describing a situation. Who and why lies beyond what a chart shows.