# Chapter 14 Initial Draft Assessment - Claude Round 01

Source: `output/drafts/claude/chapter_14.round_01.md`

Mechanical input: `output/critiques/codex/mechanical/chapter_14_raw_quality_gate_report.md` reports `FAIL open=3 watch=78`.

## Verdict

USABLE BASE WITH REQUIRED REPAIR. Use the Claude draft as the synthesis base. Do not re-prompt for a fresh chapter unless later audits find structural failure.

## What Works

- The chapter obeys the main reveal boundary: no `Eileen`, `nephew`, acknowledgment page, PHL/Philadelphia offer, confession, or class-wide exposure appears.
- The catalog handoff is properly consequential. Evidence: "Can I take these? All of them." followed by "the weight was hers, all of it" and the closing blank returned column.
- Theo's POV correctly knows he is concealing something without explaining the reveal. Evidence: "He shelved for Odile sometimes. True." and "the right explanation wasn't on offer."
- `Winter Kitchen` appears once, as a catalog object rather than nostalgia flood.
- The ending lands on dread inside competence: Theo can log the loan but cannot inventory the emotional consequence.

## Blocking Repairs Before Acceptance

1. Mechanical gate blockers:
   - line 13 one-sentence-paragraph CAP in chat text.
   - line 95 banned `Not the whole truth, but` / `Not X, but Y` formula.
2. Book-specific tic regression:
   - line 9 `which had taken him...`
   - line 27 `which told him...`
   - line 75 `which meant...`
   - line 163 `which was inventory`
   ORDER: remove all evaluative `which` captions from the integrated chapter.
3. Claude-tic repair:
   - reduce non-dialogue em-dash scaffolding, especially lines 9, 57, 73, 95, 115, 125, 127, 165.
   - cut/ground narrator glosses at lines 101, 125, 141.
   - replace line 99's `if he was honest about it`.
4. Preserve these exact story states:
   - June leaves with all nine catalogs.
   - Theo logs `Catalogs (9) - J. Park - out Thurs 11/19` or an equivalent.
   - The acknowledgment remains unseen and unmentioned.
   - The catalog stack is public enough for Theo to rationalize, dangerous enough for the reader to feel the coming discovery.

## Synthesis Approach

Keep the existing scene order and most dialogue. Make line-level edits for gate compliance, reduce self-interpretive narration, and sharpen Theo's final unease by showing failed inventory rather than explaining emotional consequence.
