# Claude-Tic Audit - Phase 8 Batch 2 Ensemble Inserts

Target text: Claude raw drafts `output/drafts/claude/phase8_batch2_mara_luis_ensemble_inserts.round_01.md` and `output/drafts/claude/phase8_batch2_ch05_mara_luis_plant.round_01.md`, plus integrated current text in Chapters 05, 06, 19, and 24.

WATCH mechanical input after repair: Ch05 open=0/watch=75; Ch06 open=0/watch=64; Ch19 open=0/watch=54; Ch24 open=0/watch=107; full manuscript open=0/watch=1433.

- CLEAR - tic 1 em-dash overuse / rhythm crutch - checked: raw and integrated inserts, especially Ch24 routing sentence - nearest miss: raw `started to route it-"Luis, put it over by the-"`; why it passes: final Ch24 uses interrupted dialogue as `--` inside speech and not a chain of em-dash rhythm clauses. No em-dash-as-prose-crutch remains in the integrated passages.
- CLEAR - tic 2 shimmer prose / atmospheric drift - checked: the added visual/object passages - nearest miss: Ch24 line 42, "cobalt going almost green at the rim where the kiln had starved the glaze"; why it passes: this is concrete ceramic color/process attached to the dish object, not free-floating atmosphere.
- CLEAR - tic 3 recurring sentence-mood verbs - checked: `mattered`, `earned`, `weighed`, `carried`, and close synonyms in raw/final text - nearest miss: Ch05 line 117, "It was the most useful thing anyone had said to her all night"; why it passes: useful is character-specific value, not Claude's abstract mood-verb stamp.
- CLEAR - tic 4 default-elegant noun phrases - checked: "a kind of", "something like", "small/quiet/careful X", and raw "whole" phrasing - nearest miss: raw Ch24 "the whole of it"; why it passes: final Ch24 reduces this to `"There," Luis said.` and concrete placement. Raw "whole business" and "whole of it" were rejected.
- CLEAR - tic 5 habitual qualifiers / softening adverbs - checked: qualifier density around Mara/Luis and Ben - nearest miss: Ch24 line 50, "June was the only one who tracked how it got there"; why it passes: exact focalized limitation, not softening or hedging.
- CLEAR - tic 6 narrator-as-philosopher intrusion - checked: all interpretive gloss after object actions - no candidate found in final text after reading for wisdom inserts. The raw line "the opposite of everything Mara did to a room" was not integrated; final Ch19 shows the unsmoothed cup by placement.
- CLEAR - tic 7 subtle theme-explanation after a beat lands - checked: Ch05 June self-recognition, Ch19 Theo logistics, Ch24 dish payoff - no blocking candidate found. Nearest miss: Ch05 lines 121-123, Mara keeps the room looking at her looking at Luis, then June remembers opening receptions; why it passes: the second beat adds June's autobiographical recognition and plants the arc, not a generalized thesis.
- CLEAR - tic 8 recursive negation - checked: repeated "not X, not Y" structures - nearest miss: Ch05 line 119, "It's better than mine. Tell him it's better than mine"; why it passes: repetition is Mara's spoken pressure, not recursive narrator negation.
- CLEAR - tic 9 self-aware meta-clauses - checked: "if that was the word", "if there was a word", "whatever that meant" family - nearest miss: Ch24 line 50, "It was a dish on a table in a crowded room"; why it passes: plain deflation, not self-conscious wording.
- CLEAR - tic 10 over-balanced parallel structures - checked: raw Ch19 and Ch24 with special attention to paired explanatory clauses - nearest miss: Ch19 line 65, "I set the station because... The jars--I thought..."; why it passes: fragmented pressure speech, not balanced literary symmetry.
- CLEAR - tic 11 short profundity-stamp endings - checked: endings of each inserted beat - nearest miss: Ch24 line 48, `"There," Luis said.`; why it passes: it is not an ending stamp and is immediately cashed by action/focalization.
- CLEAR - tic 12 default lovely/quiet/small register - checked: all new care beats - nearest miss: Ch19 line 69, "left it a little off"; why it passes: the imperfection is behaviorally specific and awkward, not generalized quiet-lovely smoothing.
- CLEAR - tic 13 physical reaction beats substituting for interiority - checked: hands/eyes/body WATCH contexts around new material - nearest miss: Ch24 line 50, "Her hands wanted a job"; why it passes: this is Mara's displacement after not translating Luis, not generic heartbeat/throat/body shorthand for feeling.

Raw-draft orders executed before acceptance:

- Raw Ch19 over-captioning rejected: "the warm paragraph loaded and ready behind her teeth," "the whole machinery," and "the opposite of everything Mara did to a room" were compressed into action: Mara starts `Luis--`, stops, says everyone counted, and leaves the cup off.
- Raw Ch24 repetition rejected: "without deciding to" appeared twice and was confirmed blocking by Claude Dialogue Doctor. The repaired current text uses concrete Sam/Ben taking food while moving through the room and the repair verification returned `OVERALL: CLEAN`.
- Raw Ch24 over-captioning rejected: "That was the sentence," "whole business with him," and "set a bow on it" were cut or reduced to `"There," Luis said` plus June's limited tracking.
- Raw Ch06 smoothing rejected: "a man not sure the floor would take a chair yet" and a Theo box-history aside were not integrated.

WATCH-count reconciliation: The WATCH counts mostly reflect existing chapter texture and title headings, with expected increases in Ch05/Ch24 from added action, eyes/hands, and trailing participles. None of the WATCH groups found an open BANNED/CAP issue. The one judgment issue Claude found in Ch24 was not a registry blocker and was repaired manually before this audit closed.

Chapter verdict: TIC-CLEAN after executed raw-draft orders.
