AngularJS - Evaluating options to a directive in the correct scope

Angular newbie here. Trying to wrap my head around directives, scopes, transclusions, and what not.

Here's what I'm trying to achieve -- each table in a cell needs to be color-coded (change in bgcolor OR addition of a specific CSS class) based on the value inside that cell. The complication is that the cell does not have a bare value - it has other bits & baubles along with it. Therefore, within the cell, I would like to have the ability to add custom HTML.

Here's what my template looks like:

<span color-codify="{'max' : object.max, 'value' : object.value}" ng-transclude>
  {{ object.value }}
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</span>

Here's what my directive looks like:

myModule.directive('colorCodify', function() {
  return {
    restrict: 'A',
    transclude: 'true',
    'link' : function(scope, element, attrs, controller) {
      var opts = scope.$eval(attrs.colorCodify);
      console.log(opts); // THIS DISPLAYs {max: undefined, value: undefined} 
    }
  }
});

The surprising part is, that even though {{ object.value }} within the <span> element renders correctly, it is not being passed down to the directive properly. However, if I refer to $parent it works properly. Example:

<span color-codify="{'max' : $parent.object.max, 'value' : $parent.object.value}" ng-transclude></span>

What's going on?