When price breaks a particular high or low that I am looking at, that would be the signal and normally I just wait for the pullback and buy/sell into it. All within context of the market bias.
I wouldn't know when price is going to chop or trade in a box until after it happens. And if I did know, I wouldn't short the top of the box if the market bias is up.
This was planned to be single 30 point trade day. Began last night with a long in the high 20's. Trade was doing nicely till I woke up and decided to "improve" things.. ended up with less than 6 points.