# Chapter 10 Initial Draft Assessment

## Source

- Claude draft: `output/drafts/claude/chapter_10.round_01.md`
- Prompt: `output/model_prompts/claude/chapter_draft/chapter_10.md`
- Raw word count: 2,443
- Raw mechanical gate: FAIL, open=3, WATCH=83

## Assessment

Accepted as the prose base after repair. The draft enacts the Chapter 10 card: Theo tries to solve the hands assignment through room usefulness, June paints the evasion instead of explaining it, and the chapter ends with Theo still reaching for a fix rather than a self-owned answer.

The strongest material to preserve:

- Opening through Theo's pre-class repair of the third easel.
- Odile's "Sit in it" pressure and the assignment mechanics.
- June's painting of Theo's hands at the third easel with his own unused station visible.
- Theo's painting of June's working grip.
- The final movement from attempted self-subject to brush-washing and another unnecessary repair.

Required repairs before integration:

1. Mechanical BANNED hits:
   - line 9 echo-line construction: "He was not early. He was..."
   - line 29 false-profound negation cluster: "Not a photograph... Not a mime..."
   - line 139 echo-line construction: "He tried... He tried..."
2. Reduce em-dash dependency in Odile instruction, the easel logistics sentence, the flat-file interruption, June's hidden easel sentence, Theo's "twice more" sentence, and the brush-washing close.
3. Reduce theme gloss after the painting reveal. "None of it underlined..." is close to explaining the image's moral work after the image has already done it.
4. Keep the ending unresolved, but make the recognition arrive through the card/object/brush rather than narrator conclusion.

## Disposition

Use Claude round 01 as base. Codex may integrate directly because the fixes are local mechanical/tic repairs and do not change the chapter's scene engine. No second Claude draft needed before Chapter 10 integration; Claude risk audits will follow after the integrated chapter exists.
