The verification is complete and written to `output/critiques/claude/chapter_24.dialogue_doctor.md`. The completed audit:

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# Audit: Dialogue Doctor — Chapter 24: First Snow (Round 2 verification)

id: dialogue_doctor | chapter: 24 | owner: claude | tier: core | round: 2 (verify repairs)

Read against the binding `checks/audits/dialogue_doctor.md`. Round 1 returned `OVERALL: BLOCKING (2 findings)`, both DIALOGUE-DIAGNOSIS: **F1** — Scene 03, l. 45 (Priya coffee caption); **F2** — Scene 02, l. 29 (Theo "four words carry it"). Required scenes per `dialogue_scene_manifest`: 02, 03, 04, 07, 08. Non-required: 01, 05, 06.

Provenance check: the current `output/chapters/chapter_24.md` is byte-identical to the after-repair snapshot `chapter_24.0013…after_dialogue_doctor_round1_repairs.md` (diff empty). The repair against `chapter_24.0011…before…` is **narration-only**: all ten changed hunks alter narration; every quoted spoken line in those hunks is unchanged. Therefore failure modes 1–7 and FAKE-SHARP cannot have moved off their Round 1 CLEAN verdicts (no dialogue line, mass, order, or attribution changed); they are re-confirmed against current text below. The evidence weight sits where the repair acted: DIALOGUE-DIAGNOSIS and the over-stripping direction of INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION.

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## TASK 1 — Blocking orders executed

**F2 — l. 29 economy-caption removed without replacement sibling. VERIFIED.**
- Before: "He'd have built Sam **a paragraph** a month ago: pentimento… the sermon. **Instead he let four words carry it and went** to top off a water jar that didn't need it."
- Current (l. 29): "He'd have built Sam **an explanation** a month ago: pentimento, the record of getting a thing wrong on purpose, the sermon. **Now he went** to top off a water jar that didn't need it."
- The economy-caption "let four words carry it" (word-count + sufficiency verb "carry") is deleted. Restraint is now pure action ("Now he went to top off a water jar"). The arc-contrast the order told me to keep survives as the *un-given* speech ("an explanation… the sermon" = Theo's old habit as content he declines), which does not rate the line he does deliver. No measuring sibling ("four words," "the short version," "let it land") was substituted. Order satisfied.

**F1 — l. 45 Priya coffee-line dialogue diagnosis removed without statement/question sibling. VERIFIED.**
- Before: '"You want that," she said, **and it landed as a thing she'd decided to stand behind rather than a question she was hiding inside.** June took it.'
- Current (l. 45): '"You want that," she said. June took it. It had too much milk.'
- The statement-vs-concealed-question caption is deleted whole. The read now rides the action already present ("brought June a coffee she hadn't asked for, caught herself doing it, and set it down anyway") and June's acceptance ("June took it. It had too much milk."). No statement/question diagnosis sibling was substituted. Order satisfied.

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## TASK 2 — Sibling sweep

**No new line-count / economy caption.** The full current text contains three word-count phrasings; none certifies a line's economy:
- "two words at an urn" (l. 57) — unchanged from before; Round 1 cleared it and cited it as requirement-met (public truth stays small). Sizes the confession's scale, not its craft.
- "sayable in two words by a woman with a good eye" (l. 69) — unchanged; unflagged in Round 1. Sizes how little Ruth needed to say.
- "two words with nothing after them" (l. 131) — **new**, replacing the swept near-sibling "the flat agreement with no *but* after it." Scrutinized as the strongest new-caption candidate; it **survives** (see Scene 07 DIALOGUE-DIAGNOSIS): it sizes the *scale* of Odile's concession in the same register as the already-cleared "two words at an urn," drops the former delivery-raters ("flat," "no *but*"), carries no sufficiency verb (nothing "carries" or "lands"), and June immediately does something with it rather than grading it. Not an economy-certification.

**No delivery-rating replacement.** All four delivery-raters flagged for the sweep are gone, replaced with neutral / volume / availability / scale language, not new ratings:
- l. 51 "precise and low" → "**low**" (volume only).
- l. 69 "the reflex answer was a **managed** one" → "the first answer was **ready**" (availability of an unspoken answer).
- l. 129 "**Plain, no cushion under it.**" → deleted (the line "It wasn't yours to run," now stands unrated).
- l. 131 "the **flat** agreement with **no *but*** after it" → "two words with nothing after them" (scale).

**No restored public confession.** l. 57 unchanged: "That was the only confession the room was going to get: two words at an urn." Ruth's clocking (ll. 51–57) and June's "No… We didn't." are intact and minimal; nothing public was re-opened.

**No restored nephew reveal.** l. 121 unchanged: "He's my--" She stopped… "He was handy," she said again. Odile still declines the nephew word even with the door shut. Pre-reveal guardrail and "no private reveal" both hold.

**Non-blocking watches folded in (confirmation, not a gate):** the "paragraph"-as-speech-unit figure dropped from Round 1's 4–5 narration uses to a single *dialogue* instance — Theo's licensed comic self-image "I had the paragraph loaded" / "carrying paragraphs around in my pocket" (l. 73); narration uses at ll. 29, 43, 141 became "explanation" / "gloss" / "answer." Over-composed interiority compressed (l. 127 aphorism cut back; "both were true" removed, l. 131). Arc-labels removed (l. 83 "the version of door-holding he was learning"; l. 141 "because he was learning what was his to say").

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## TASK 3 — Required-scene verdicts (current-text evidence)

### SCENE 02 — north wall; Sam + Theo, the wall-lean (ll. 16–31)
1. VOICE CONVERGENCE — CLEAN. Sam offers a fix ("I've got a level in the car. Two minutes."), Theo refuses ("It's meant to lean,"). Counter-candidate: two terse working men — survives; opposite intents (help vs. refuse-help).
2. MONOTONE Q/A — CLEAN. Offer → refusal → non-verbal file ("Huh"); uneven masses, no volley. Counter-candidate: Sam's two-part turn vs. Theo's one-liner — survives (no matched call/response).
3. MISSING INTERIORITY — CLEAN. June reads both men ("an installer's reflex twitching under the observation"; "the tone of a man filing something away"). Counter-candidate: Theo's refusal gets no gloss of its own — survives (June's read brackets it).
4. QUESTIONS-AS-STATEMENTS — CLEAN. No questions present.
5. FAKE-McCARTHY — CLEAN. "It's meant to lean," is clipped but carded (Theo's restraint) and interiority-framed. Counter-candidate: "Huh" — survives (tagged with a read, not bare-stark).
6. JARGON-TRADING — CLEAN. "a lean" / "a level" self-weigh; "pentimento" sits in June's head, glossed. Counter-candidate: "pentimento" — survives (translated, not traded in dialogue).
7. ATTRIBUTION OPACITY — CLEAN. Two speakers, both tagged.
- FAKE-SHARP — CLEAN. "It's meant to lean" is speakable, in-character. Counter-candidate: "Sam was good at that: stepping aside before anyone had to ask" — survives as character-narration, not a spoken zinger.
- INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION — CLEAN (not over-stripped; the l. 29 cut removed a gloss, not orientation). June still annotates every beat; no reader-dark passage.
- DIALOGUE-DIAGNOSIS — **CLEAN (was F2; repaired).** Current l. 29 no longer counts or certifies Theo's line: "He'd have built Sam an explanation a month ago… the sermon. Now he went to top off a water jar that didn't need it." Strongest counter-candidate: "the sermon" — survives because it names the speech Theo *declines* (his old habit rendered as content), not a rating of the line he delivers; the sufficiency verb is gone.

REVISION ORDERS: none.

### SCENE 03 — urn/coffee table; Mara, Luis, Priya, Ruth, June (ll. 34–57)
1. VOICE CONVERGENCE — CLEAN. Mara routes ("a dish that comes back full is a dish that gets to come back"), Luis is one word ("There,"), Priya cares plainly ("You want that,"), Ruth is minimal ("Two underpaintings,"), June is dry-exact ("Twice. Once for no reason. Here."). Counter-candidate: Priya's "She got the light off the pot right, look. It's carrying the picture" edges June's turf — survives as lay appreciation (no value/edge/ground vocabulary).
2. MONOTONE Q/A — CLEAN. Placements and declaratives; Ruth "You didn't start this together" → June "No… We didn't." is a single reveal beat, not a volley.
3. MISSING INTERIORITY — CLEAN. "June had been counting on that"; "she read the truth and left it un-itemized." Counter-candidate: the Luis placement — survives (June reads its meaning).
4. QUESTIONS-AS-STATEMENTS — CLEAN. "You want that," is a statement; Ruth's line is declarative; no portent-question.
5. FAKE-McCARTHY — CLEAN. Luis's "There," is terse but carded and interiority-surrounded.
6. JARGON-TRADING — CLEAN. "underpaintings," "the split," "carrying the picture" anchor to the visible panel and the read label.
7. ATTRIBUTION OPACITY — CLEAN. Five bodies, each line tagged or unambiguous; the Mara→Luis handoff keeps its agent explicit.
- FAKE-SHARP — CLEAN, at Ruth's one-line ceiling. "It's the best thing on the wall" is her single sanctioned sharp line. Counter-candidate: "a dish that comes back full is a dish that gets to come back" — survives as Mara's rendered care-logic (narration, not a spoken maxim).
- INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION — CLEAN (not over-stripped). The l. 45 caption cut slightly *reduces* the annotate-every-gesture density Round 1 watched; June's mind stays continuous.
- DIALOGUE-DIAGNOSIS — **CLEAN (was F1; repaired).** Current l. 45: "'You want that,' she said. June took it. It had too much milk." No statement/question captioning. l. 51 now reads "said the one thing, low and only for the three feet around them" ("precise" removed; "low" is volume). Strongest counter-candidate: "She said it like a date she'd written down and meant to keep" (l. 47) — survives as a sincerity/manner simile (she means it), not a rating of Priya's phrasing.

REVISION ORDERS: none.

### SCENE 04 — back wall; June + Theo debrief (ll. 60–75)
1. VOICE CONVERGENCE — CLEAN. June compresses ("Practice." / "Worse for you, better for the party."); Theo expands and confesses ("carrying paragraphs around in my pocket… It's exhausting."). Blind-POV holds.
2. MONOTONE Q/A — CLEAN. Prompt/answer with uneven mass; reads as couple's aftermath talk (reading-guide sanctioned).
3. MISSING INTERIORITY — CLEAN. "She appreciated the pause, because the first answer was ready and he let it go past"; "He didn't reach for the rest."
4. QUESTIONS-AS-STATEMENTS — CLEAN. "How's it feel to get caught." is a flattened real question (June wants the answer), not a disguised position.
5. FAKE-McCARTHY — CLEAN. "She won't--" is natural interruption, not performed clipping; attribution intact.
6. JARGON-TRADING — CLEAN. "the rest," "the room can hold it" glossed in l. 69 interiority.
7. ATTRIBUTION OPACITY — CLEAN. Two speakers, clear.
- FAKE-SHARP — CLEAN, at edge. June's "Worse for you, better for the party" lands just after Theo's vulnerable "I don't know how you've done it your entire life"; survives as her carded deflection-by-joke, short and speakable. Cleared counter-candidate: "Practice." (plain, exact).
- INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION — CLEAN (not over-stripped). l. 69 still explains "the rest" (necessary); no reader-dark stretch.
- DIALOGUE-DIAGNOSIS — CLEAN. l. 69's Round 1 near-miss "the reflex answer was a managed one" is repaired to "the first answer was ready and he let it go past" — describes the *availability* of an answer Theo withholds (restraint), not the wording of what he says. Strongest counter-candidate: "the first answer was ready" — survives on that unspoken-target ground. Theo's "I had the paragraph loaded" (l. 73) is a character's comic self-image, licensed once, and is dialogue, not narration about another's speech.

REVISION ORDERS: none.

### SCENE 07 — flat files; Odile + June, the ledger (ll. 110–131)
1. VOICE CONVERGENCE — CLEAN. Odile imperative/deflecting ("He was handy."; "I'm retiring, not dead."); June plain ("You knew."; "It wasn't yours to run."). Opposite masses.
2. MONOTONE Q/A — CLEAN. Flat accusation vs. varying-length parry; not a matched volley.
3. MISSING INTERIORITY — CLEAN. June drives ("She was good at taking a made thing apart for the order it got made in").
4. QUESTIONS-AS-STATEMENTS — CLEAN. "You knew." / "You ran all of it to see if we would." are plain accusations.
5. FAKE-McCARTHY — CLEAN. "He's my--" then "He was handy" is earned self-interruption protecting the nephew secret (requirement met: no reveal, even privately).
6. JARGON-TRADING — CLEAN. "the class ledger," "Last slot," "corrected my label" are shown (the page is on the flat file) or re-glossed ("hung backward, and a stranger fixed it").
7. ATTRIBUTION OPACITY — CLEAN. Two speakers, clear.
- FAKE-SHARP — CLEAN, Odile at her sanctioned high-density ceiling; she is held wrong ("It wasn't yours to run." / "No… It wasn't."), so neither oracle nor saint. No fourth aphorism was added in repair.
- INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION — CLEAN, and the over-composed direction improved: Round 1's ~40-word aphorism at l. 127 is compressed to "she had put the proof on a page instead of in a sentence," and the "both were true" tag (l. 131) is cut. June's take-it-apart interiority remains present.
- DIALOGUE-DIAGNOSIS — CLEAN. The Round 1 near-misses are repaired: l. 127 "reaching through a ledger… never once said a true thing straight" → "she had put the proof on a page instead of in a sentence" (object-vs-verbal *method*, not a line-rating); l. 129 "Plain, no cushion under it." deleted; l. 131 "the flat agreement with no *but* after it" → "two words with nothing after them." Strongest counter-candidate: **"two words with nothing after them" (l. 131)** — the one phrase that counts an utterance. It survives: it sizes the *scale* of Odile's concession in the same register as the Round-1-cleared "two words at an urn" (l. 57), carries no sufficiency/craft verb, and June immediately weighs it rather than grading it ("more than Odile gave most people and less than the thing was worth"). Perceptiveness cashes out as what June does with it, per §2 — not a caption on how Odile spoke.

REVISION ORDERS: none.

### SCENE 08 — studio to the corner of Orchard; June + Theo, portrait and snow (ll. 134–161)
1. VOICE CONVERGENCE — CLEAN. June dry/directive ("Keep it. Paint another one where I'm facing the right way and I'll think about it."); Theo plain and self-correcting ("I'm going to walk you to the--" / "To the corner,").
2. MONOTONE Q/A — CLEAN. Statements and a weather beat ("It won't stick." / "I know.") — functional ordinary-talk, sanctioned.
3. MISSING INTERIORITY — CLEAN. "she watched it cost him and watched him pay it, and she liked him so much in that second it was faintly annoying."
4. QUESTIONS-AS-STATEMENTS — CLEAN. None.
5. FAKE-McCARTHY — CLEAN. "Okay," he said. sits inside a fully interiorized beat.
6. JARGON-TRADING — CLEAN. No untranslated world-terms in dialogue.
7. ATTRIBUTION OPACITY — CLEAN. Two speakers, clear.
- FAKE-SHARP — CLEAN, at edge. Theo's "It's the only thing in this building that is" is grounded in the concrete fact that everything else is Odile's. The snow close stays literal ("the glare swallowed it. She had to look where the street went black"); no metaphor restored.
- INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION — CLEAN (not over-stripped). The arc-labels Round 1 watched are gone (l. 83 "the version of door-holding he was learning" and l. 141 "because he was learning what was his to say"); Theo's self-correcting action ("walk you to the--"/"To the corner") now carries the arc without the label.
- DIALOGUE-DIAGNOSIS — CLEAN. l. 141 "for the paragraph she could watch him not reaching for" → "for the answer she could watch him not reaching for"; no narration rates another's wording. Strongest counter-candidate: "the answer she could watch him not reaching for" — survives as a restraint-image (an answer Theo does not reach for), not a rating of a delivered line.

REVISION ORDERS: none.

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## CHAPTER VERDICT

**OVERALL: CLEAN**

Both Round 1 blocking findings are resolved as ordered, with no replacement sibling: F2 (l. 29 economy-caption "let four words carry it") deleted, restraint rendered as pure action; F1 (l. 45 statement/question caption) deleted, read carried by action. The sibling sweep holds — no new line-count/economy caption (the sole new count, "two words with nothing after them" at l. 131, survives as scale-sizing consistent with the already-cleared "two words at an urn"), no delivery-rating replacement, no restored public confession (l. 57 intact), no restored nephew reveal (l. 121 intact). All ten repair edits are narration-only; every spoken line is unchanged, so failure modes 1–7 and FAKE-SHARP remain CLEAN and DIALOGUE-DIAGNOSIS is now CLEAN in every required scene. Chapter requirements re-confirmed met: public truth stays "two words at an urn," Odile declines the nephew word even in private, Ruth keeps her one-line ceiling, Odile is economical and un-sainted, June's spoken lines stay plain and exact.
