# Chapter 04 Initial Draft Assessment

Source draft: `output/drafts/claude/chapter_04.round_02.md` after failed round 01.

Verdict: ACCEPT AS BASE WITH LIGHT SYNTHESIS REPAIRS.

- Card enactment: passes. The chapter goal is to survive first Sonia's without cover-story collapse; the draft turns "friendly questions are more dangerous than interrogation" into Mara's "How did you two meet?" and Ruth's quieter "Is it comped?"
- Required revelation: passes. The public story becomes usable because June and Theo improvise from real facts: "Thursdays. 43 labels, one flipped. The pencil. Line eight."
- Required close: passes. Ruth's suspicion is wrong but close: she reads "an arrangement" rather than romance, and Theo knows "the wall was thin."
- Repair orders before acceptance: remove one-sentence paragraph cap finding; replace two interruption em dashes with ASCII punctuation; preserve the Ruth napkin/receipt list ending; do not add Odile at Sonia's or resolve the protected relation.

Disposition: repairs executed in `output/chapters/chapter_04.md`; final mechanical gate passed open=0.
