All inputs read. The repaired line is confirmed at `output/chapters/chapter_04.md:61`, and the rest of the chapter is unchanged from the text round 3 swept. Below is the completed round-4 audit.

---

# Audit: Dialogue Doctor — Chapter 04 (post-repair verification, round 4 / Mara fries-clock repair)

id: dialogue_doctor | owner: claude | chapter: 04 ("The Edited Version") | POV: Theo
Manifest entry: `chapter_04.md`, scene 01, lines 2–169, 59 dialogue lines, 82 quoted utterances — Doctor required.
Inputs read: current chapter text; round-3 findings (`claude/chapter_04.dialogue_doctor_round3.md`); repair memo (`codex/chapter_04.dialogue_repair_memo.md`); synthesis memo; voice cards (`style_and_voice.md`); `premise/READING_GUIDE.md` + `premise/premise.md` + `premise/patterns/reading_guide_bans.tsv`; dialogue scene manifest; Chapter 04 card; mechanical gate report (PASS, open=0; Chapter 04 WATCH=41-row local hits, none dialogue-register).

Stance: skeptical re-verification. One line changed since round 3; round 3's full sweep already ran under the amended reading guide (plain-speech floor, zero-tolerance dialogue-diagnosis, structural-weight phrase ban), so this round verifies the single repair on its required axes, checks the repair for collateral damage against the round-1 monoculture finding and Mara's card, and re-runs all nine modes on the current text rather than trusting carried-forward CLEANs.

---

## Repair verification — round-3 blocker (Mara, line 61)

Old line: `"That's three words," Mara said. "I have fries coming. Expand."` — failed FAKE-SHARP via the reading guide's zero-tolerance dialogue-diagnosis rule (§2/§6): rating the form of June's utterance (its word count), the same *"That's + meta-description of the utterance"* construction as chapter 02's ordered-out structural-weight wording and this chapter's repaired "gallery voice" exit.

New line: `"I have fries coming," Mara said. "Expand."` (61). **VERIFIED FIXED**, tested on each required axis:

- *Utterance-form rating removed:* CLEAN. Nothing in the line comments on, characterizes, or rates June's language. "Expand." is an imperative demanding more content — it asks for what was left out, not a caption of how the three words were phrased. The banned *"That's + meta-description"* construction is gone entirely, not paraphrased; no "edited answer" kin was substituted. This is the exact rewrite direction round 3's revision order pre-authorized ("a pure content demand — `'I have fries coming. Expand.'` carries the beat alone").
- *Interrogation pressure preserved:* CLEAN. The pressure now runs entirely through the frame Mara set two lines earlier (`"And don't give me the edited version. People always edit the first one."`) plus the bare imperative. June's `"At the gallery."` still reads as a stonewall because Mara demanded the unedited version and got four words; the demand to expand lands without the count. The hand-off into the relay survives — Theo picks it up (`"She came to the opening in September"`) and June corrects him, exactly as before.
- *Mara's voice card:* CLEAN. Default-contract (`"I have fries coming"`), gently meddling, and the line is her card's example move nearly verbatim ("How did you two meet? No, the real version.") executed in two beats across lines 55 and 61. Round 3's constraint that the rewrite must not produce a flat deadpan correction holds: "Expand." is not a correction of fact, and it sits inside a comic conceit rather than the round-1 dry-veto register; her other resolving moves this chapter (the scarf-version conceit at 143–147, `"It isn't," Mara agreed. "But it's close."`) keep her in the warmth lane, so the monoculture repair is not re-opened.
- *Fries-clock comedy:* CLEAN. The joke's mechanism — Mara setting a food-arrival deadline on a confession — was always in the second sentence, and it survives intact; if anything the clock is now the whole line, which is funnier than the arithmetic was. The clock is paid off at line 117 when `Dee set down two baskets of fries` ends the interrogation on schedule.

Prior repairs spot-checked for regression: the openings replacement (65), Sam's `"Pie first, Ruthie."` (133), Mara's scarf enforcement (143–147), Ben's class-list lines (101), `"Line eight. The last blank line, somehow."` (107), and the exit line `"You're still at work," she said. "We're not at the gallery."` (163) are all unchanged from the text round 3 verified. No collateral edits found anywhere in the chapter.

---

## SCENE 01 — Sonia's diner, corner booth (lines 2–169)

Calibration applied before flagging: ordinary-talk meal/aftermath scene, licensed to circle, stall, and produce flat functional lines (`"Not since one."`, `"I'm having pie."`, order traffic) — not flagged. No chat-format or non-standard dialogue forms; no guide exclusions in play. Plain-speech floor: both principals land direct unguarded sentences (`"She doesn't owe the gallery anything."`; `"You can stand where you want."`); every exchange is followable as text. Dialogue-diagnosis line-by-line sweep rerun on the current text under §2/§6; adjudications from round 3 re-checked and upheld: Ruth's `at a volume built for two` is acoustic staging; Theo's `It came out flat and then it came out as inventory` and `which defended nothing and wasn't asked to` are the focalizer deflating his own utterances (the rule's lead clause targets "one another's" language; banning self-rendered delivery would ban "he said quietly"); Mara's `"don't give me the edited version"` / `"See, that's a real first version"` and Theo's `figuring her version would be shorter` rate the *story* — what was included or omitted — which is the chapter's licensed subject and Mara's card example nearly verbatim, not phrasing; `He didn't argue with the label. It was accurate` evaluates her read of his behavior, not her sentence. Zero hits remain.

**1. VOICE CONVERGENCE: CLEAN** — covered attributions and re-read all 59 lines for rhythmic/lexical interchangeability; re-ran the correction census post-repair. Each speaker's resolving move stays distinct: Mara demands and lands soft, Sam moves objects, Priya checks bodies and facts, Ben expands nervously (`"…this place is dangerously convenient, and I've done the math on it becoming a habit."`), Luis states one material fact, Ruth asks the stripped question, June corrects with visual nouns, Theo inventories. Strongest counter-candidate: `"It isn't," Luis said. / "It isn't," Mara agreed. "But it's close."` (113–115) — identical words in two mouths. Survives: married shorthand differentiated by the resolving move; Luis stops at the fact, Mara concedes and adds the soft landing her card specifies. Second candidate `"Front left." / "Front left," Theo agreed.` (23–25) survives as the useful-men handshake both cards predict, grounded in the table-wobble fix Theo just performed.

**2. MONOTONE Q/A RHYTHM: CLEAN** — checked both interrogation stretches (Mara's meet-story 55–115; Ruth's probe 123–131) for equal-weight volleys. The meet-story remains structurally anti-volley: simultaneous starts (`"There was a label," Theo began, at the same time June said, "He had a label wrong," and they both stopped.`), a hedged count corrected (`"Out of, what, forty?" / "Forty-three."`), answers from one word to June's six-sentence Thursday speech; the repaired line 61 shortens Mara's beat and increases weight asymmetry rather than reducing it. Strongest counter-candidate: `"Which wall?" / "Back room. North." / "Eye height?" / "Fifty-seven, center. Like everything in the building."` (91–97) — a genuine clipped volley. Survives: two beats only, the appositive breaks weight symmetry, and the exchange exits into the napkin drawing; spec-trading is both speakers' card-licensed care language.

**3. MISSING INTERIORITY: CLEAN** — Theo's mind stays on throughout: the three-versions paragraph (57), the arithmetic paragraph (119), the Ruth-file paragraph (131), the un-argued label and receipt list at close (163–169). Strongest counter-candidate: the improv relay (59–115), the longest line-traffic stretch. Survives because the focalizer interjects at the moments of cost: `heard it as it left him: a pattern, confirmed, by the man with no cover for knowing it` (67); `which defended nothing and wasn't asked to` (85); `You couldn't. That was the whole trouble with it.` (89). The reader is never reduced to the lines' informational content.

**4. QUESTIONS-AS-STATEMENTS: CLEAN** — checked every question (Mara's interrogation, Priya's `"Did you eat?"`, Luis's specs, Ben's `"How'd you even get in?"`, Mara's `"He still carries the pencil?"`). All seek information and get answered. Strongest counter-candidate: `"The slot," she said. "Is it comped?"` (125) — noun-fronted and probe-shaped. Survives: a real question with a factual answer Ruth doesn't have; her card is exactly this ("asks clean questions, withholds her own conclusion"), and the portent lives in Theo's flustered inventory of an answer, not in manufactured phrasing.

**5. FAKE-McCARTHY MINIMALISM: CLEAN** — checked clipped exchanges for stripped-attribution starkness performance; the repair shortened Mara's line 61, so this mode was re-tested there specifically: the line keeps full attribution (`Mara said`) and sits in fully-bodied narration, and its brevity is a deadline joke, not performed starkness. Strongest counter-candidate: `"The 11:42. Once." / "Twice," Priya said.` (31–33) — bare fragments opening an exchange. Survives: Ben's fragment is embarrassment-compression (card: self-mocking logistical jokes), Priya's one-word receipt is her card's called-out planning, both are anchored, and Ben immediately expands for three clauses — the opposite of starkness performance.

**6. JARGON-TRADING WITHOUT TRANSLATION: CLEAN** — checked "the fall hang," "4B," "fifty-seven, center," "charcoal cracks," "looser roll." Each is translated in-line: the fall hang by apposition to the September opening; the 4B by `"It was a soft pencil"` plus "tooth marks at the end from a decade of him"; `"Looser roll. Charcoal cracks."` translates itself by consequence and is enacted (June gives the rubber band a turn of slack). Strongest counter-candidate: `"Fifty-seven, center. Like everything in the building."` (97) — a hanging-standard number the reader can't price. Survives: the appositive converts the spec into its meaning (everything in Theo's life at regulation height), and the napkin drawing grounds it in the literal scene.

**7. ATTRIBUTION OPACITY: CLEAN** — eight speakers plus a waitress; traced every unattributed line to its speaker, with extra attention to the repaired stretch: line 61 carries `Mara said` explicitly, and the relay it opens alternates with attributed anchors (`Theo said` 63, `June said it to Mara` 65). Strongest counter-candidate: the unattributed `"Line eight. The last blank line, somehow."` (107). Survives: strict two-speaker alternation is established by the two prior attributed lines (`"It reopened," Theo said. / "Briefly," June said.`), content locks it (roster admin is Theo's domain), and the next line re-anchors with "June said."

**FAKE-SHARP: CLEAN** — full cut-list rerun on the current text. No aphorism-delivery exchanges, no noun-question/portentous-answer pairs (Ruth's probe adjudicated under mode 4), no "in [abstraction]" lines, no monoculture rhythm (mode 1 census), no zingers displacing ordinary affect, and the one loaded-silence beat (Ruth's `"I didn't ask what she owed."` and the quarter-turned cup) is fully marked by the focalizer pricing what the silence assembles (131). Dialogue-diagnosis sweep: zero hits — the chapter's last *"That's + meta-description"* construction is gone. Strongest counter-candidate, examined first as the changed line: `"I have fries coming," Mara said. "Expand."` (61) — short, laugh-shaped, in the danger position the old violation occupied. Survives: it is speakable, not quotable-without-the-scene (the joke needs the pending fries order from line 37 and the deadline pays off at 117); it demands content, not form; and it is Mara's card move (gently meddling warmth-as-pressure) rather than a deadpan veto. Second candidate: the exit line `"You're still at work," she said. "We're not at the gallery."` (163) — the chapter's sharpest exchange, in the cut-list's danger slot (character tired, exiting). Survives: behavior-naming rather than speech-naming (Priya planted the category at 51: `"You can stop working," she said. "It's after nine."`), contracted and speakable, her card's exact-then-exit sequence, with the silence after it marked and paid for (`He didn't argue with the label… and she had a record of catching the wrong ones.`). Third candidate: `"He knows the gallery's schedule," June said. "I was a recurring item on it."` (71) — survives as self-aimed deflection, card-licensed compression-when-exposed, not a zinger at Theo's expense.

**INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION: CLEAN** — rule 9 tested both directions. Mind-dark: never (mode 3). Explaining-twice: strongest counter-candidate is the arithmetic paragraph (119) — `Nothing they had said was false. The opening, corrected to a Thursday. The label, with a count attached… She had lied the way a good hang lies` — which re-lists beats the reader just watched. Survives because the enumeration reclassifies rather than recaps: each item returns with new valence (curation-as-lying), and the paragraph delivers the chapter card's named revelation ("they can improvise together, which is dangerous because it works") plus the asymmetry beat (`There was no procedure for it being easy.`), none of which the dialogue stated. The Ruth-file paragraph (131) is reactive, not duplicative, and required by Ruth's card's narration-transparency rule (her misread must be professional impropriety, not romance-clocking).

Voice-card spot checks (step 4): no card-forbidden lines. Ruth's one-sharp-editorial-line cap respected (`"I didn't ask what she owed"` is the one; `"Is it comped?"` and `"I'm having pie"` are functional). Theo's ledger over-offer (127) is his card's over-explaining-when-ashamed. Rule 4: every dialogue line scans default-contract; no stiff full forms in dialogue (narration's `It was not shorter` is not dialogue). Rule 6: contemporary register throughout, no anachronism. `reading_guide_bans.tsv` regex (`load[ -]?bearing`) — zero hits in the chapter, consistent with the gate's open=0.

No new objection is raised this round: the only line that changed is line 61, every other verdict above re-tested against the unchanged text, and nothing surfaced that the round-3 full sweep missed.

**REVISION ORDERS:** none. No FAIL verdicts this round.

Non-blocking cross-notes (carried forward from round 3, unchanged):
1. The cover-story list still appears four times across fifty lines (dialogue relay, arithmetic paragraph 119, Ruth-file paragraph in part, receipt note 167). Acceptable; the arithmetic paragraph remains the named cuttable instance if the editor stage wants compression.
2. Older audit-file prose (round 2) contains the now-banned structural-weight phrase; audit files are outside the gate's scan scope, but downstream tooling quoting old audits into chapter-adjacent text should be aware of the regex ban in `premise/patterns/reading_guide_bans.tsv`.

---

OVERALL: CLEAN
