The pass is written to `output/critiques/claude/chapter_03.clarity_pass.md`. Verdict: **CONFUSING (2 findings)** — but both are small, mechanical, and cheaply fixable; after the two revision orders the chapter is clear-under-complexity.

The two accidental findings:

1. **Studio seating contradiction.** The chapter gives three position cues that can't all be true: Theo "at the third easel from the door" (l. 15), Sam walking "her easel and Theo's a foot apart" because June was "penned in" (l. 43 — only physically possible for adjacent easels), and "Two easels down, Theo became very busy" at the rail critique (l. 123). A reader trying to picture whether the couples sit as pairs — which they will, in a couples-only class — can't settle the map. The order: fix the seating as adjacent (June #1, Theo #2) via two micro-edits, with a fallback if the author wants the gap kept.
2. **Focalizer garden path** at the chapter's highest-load beat: "Fifteen years of training looked at the page for her." (l. 59) follows a full paragraph about Sam (they/them) with Odile as the last speaker, and June isn't named for another six lines. One-word fix: "for June."

On your special-focus questions, everything else passes with evidence quoted in the audit:

- **Names:** six introductions arrive in three spaced pairs, each name attached at a handshake beat and re-anchored by an owned signature; the drawing-survey paragraphs work as a disguised roll-call.
- **Pairings:** all four placeable on first read. The surname-to-individual mapping (which Valdez is which, Ruth = Kim) resolves only by elimination, but no plot beat this chapter depends on it — noted that "Kim" must be cashed on-page before a later chapter uses it alone.
- **Sam's they/them:** clear and scene-native; the one-beat plural-"they" risk dies inside the same line on "Now you're not. Sam."
- **Geography/rotation:** the rotation is fully followable (rules in three sentences, sampled surname calls, "seven versions of herself" confirming the full circuit); geography holds except for finding 1.
- **Sonia's:** reads unambiguously as a next-chapter hook — Mara's four sentences orient kind/distance/ritual, Ben's booth line says tonight, and the chapter ends physically en route.

Two things I verified against the actual chapter 01–02 text rather than just the summaries: Sonia's is genuinely new here (fine — Mara's intro carries it), and the "pencil cup downstairs" analogy at l. 101 presupposes a plant that doesn't exist in Ch 01–02. I ruled the unattributed charcoal gift ASSIGNED (the reading guide's never-announce care-move rule covers it) but flagged the phantom callback as a maintenance note: plant the pencil cup upstream in editing, or accept new information in callback clothing. Assigned-opacity rulings (retaped card line, Odile's pairing-and-exit, June's sideways yes) all cite the governing reading-guide declarations.
