All inputs read — chapter, round 1 orders, draft, voice cards, reading guide, manifest, chapter card, gate report. The de-polish was largely executed, but the rewrite introduced one new zero-tolerance violation. The audit below is the deliverable.

# Dialogue Doctor — Chapter 09 ("Local Work") — Round 2 Verification

Read cold against: `output/chapters/chapter_09.md` (revised), round 1 blocking orders (`output/critiques/claude/chapter_09.dialogue_doctor.md`), raw draft `chapter_09.round_01.md`, voice cards (June, Asha, Nia), `premise/READING_GUIDE.md` §2 (plain-speech floor; zero-tolerance dialogue diagnosis), `premise/patterns/reading_guide_bans.tsv`, Codex initial assessment and Claude-tic audit, mechanical gate (0 open findings), and the dialogue scene manifest (one scene, 01, lines 2–131). "Load-bearing" ban: re-swept the revised chapter; no hits. Plain-speech floor: re-verified with fresh evidence, because round 1's cited Asha line ("I'm serious. I can do the boring parts and still paint at night.") no longer exists in the chapter — the floor still holds on Asha's "I've said yes to stable things that ate my painting time. I've also said no to rent money and hated myself by Tuesday." (line 103) and June's "I don't know." / "My sublet's up in January either way." (line 87); the conversation remains followable as text.

**Round 1 order execution, verified line by line:**
1. *(Mode 1)* Executed. "It's the only fight you can win against a corner." is gone; June's corner logic is now procedure: "I paint the whole face to the breaks. New white meets old white at the corner. Anywhere else, people see the seam." (line 31). "The wall's been here. The wall wins." (line 27) stands alone as her one sanctioned epigram.
2. *(Mode 3)* Executed. New interiority at line 57 after Asha's exit: "The cover had not worked. Asha had seen the wrong square and chosen the elevator anyway. June set the foamcore face-down on the crate dolly before she could make another mark."
3. *(FAKE-SHARP)* Executed in four of five sub-moves: (a) the apology-conceit third beat replaced with flat caveats ("High hundreds. Heat is weird. Freight elevator sticks. Twenty-four-hour access.", line 93); (b) corners/feather taxonomy cut and the loading-door callback deleted — **but the feed-line was renamed, not cut**: "That's the whole reference?" survives as "That's the whole pitch?" (line 95), still cueing a capper (see DIALOGUE-DIAGNOSIS); (c) "I'd take the call. Calls are free." replaced with the hedged, self-implicating "I'd call. I don't know if I'd go." plus personal history (line 103); (d) the "One:/Two:" pitch and meta-preface dismantled; Kessler moved to the loading door (line 125) where the contact-texting already happens; (e) the nine-years self-summary cut — note the rewrite cut the *entire* "send Nia my name" beat rather than trimming to the card line; see the non-blocking note after the orders.
4. *(Dialogue diagnosis)* Executed on both round 1 instances: "It came out plain because it was the plainest fact she had" is gone — "I don't know." now stands bare, followed by a physical beat and the sublet/math facts (line 87); "She doesn't dress things up." is gone — line 83 keeps only the person-targeting vouch, "She said real paycheck. Knowing her, she means it." **However, the rewrite introduced a new instance** (see below).

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## SCENE 01 (lines 2–131; gallery project room → loading dock; speakers: June, Asha, Nia [text], incoming artist, Marisol)

**1. VOICE CONVERGENCE: CLEAN** — re-ran the blind test on the round 1 acceptance lines (now 11, 27, 85, 103). June reads optical-territorial: "The wall's been here. The wall wins." (line 27), "It'll flash. Twenty-two patches, it'll look like the wall has a rash." (line 31). Asha reads logistical-hedged: "Call her before Friday. People tell three people before they post." (line 85), "I'd call. I don't know if I'd go." (line 103), "Six weeks if you can show up with a level. Pays late. Pays real." (line 125) — schedule-brain shorthand built on her card's "The install pays late, but it pays," with hedges ("I think, at this point," "I don't know if I'd go," "That's not advice.") June never uses. The capper machine round 1 found is broken: June holds the only standalone epigram. Strongest counter-candidate: "They're always eye level. Nobody hangs anything at the baseboard." (Asha, line 11) — same two-beat declarative shape as June's wall-wins, but the second sentence is literal explanation of where holes cluster, not maxim, and it is the last Asha line of that shape in the chapter; with attributions covered the speakers now separate on rhythm, not just content domain.

**2. MONOTONE Q/A RHYTHM: CLEAN** — re-checked the lunch sequence, still the densest Q→A run ("Keys to what?", "Real money or arts money?", "You'd actually go?", "How cheap is forgive?", "That's the whole pitch?", "You'd take Philadelphia?"). Strongest counter-candidate: "Keys to what?" — "A printshop. Six months. Programs and fixing the press. Paycheck, not invoices." (lines 77–79) — survives because answer mass swings from four fragments to Asha's Dana paragraph (line 89) to her four-fragment rate answer (line 93), and the beats (chewing, the label pressed to the bucket, "Asha looked at her phone, put it down," the cup turned once) keep breaking the meter. The revision did not introduce new symmetry.

**3. MISSING INTERIORITY: CLEAN** — the round 1 dark patch is repaired. After "Asha looked at the middle square, and at the run beneath it, and went to pad the elevator." (line 55), the focalizer's mind returns: "The cover had not worked. Asha had seen the wrong square and chosen the elevator anyway. June set the foamcore face-down on the crate dolly before she could make another mark." (line 57). June registers being seen, judges the cover failed, and the registration converts to action (hiding the artifact, stopping her own hand) — rule 9's orientation through her lived relation to being caught, rendered per her card (physically busy under stress). Tested the repair against the silence-as-caption ban: "chosen the elevator anyway" interprets what Asha *did* — what she looked at and where she went — not her silence as an utterance, and no line or pause is characterized; this is the permitted "shown by what a character does with what they heard" move on both sides. Strongest residual counter-candidate: the clipped exchange itself ("It's a test." / "Of what?") still runs without interiority between lines — survives because the dark stretch is now three lines long, motivated as June's deflection, and the cost lands immediately after.

**4. QUESTIONS-AS-STATEMENTS: CLEAN** — re-checked every question including the new "That's the whole pitch?" (line 95), which is genuine verification of how little is on offer and is answered sincerely. Strongest counter-candidate: "How cheap is forgive?" (June, line 91) — June quoting Asha's word back could manufacture portent, but it is a real rate inquiry and now gets a flat number plus caveats rather than an extension of the conceit; no speaker delivers a verdict in question costume.

**5. FAKE-McCARTHY MINIMALISM: CLEAN** — checked the clipped exchanges. Strongest counter-candidate: "Six weeks if you can show up with a level. Pays late. Pays real." (Asha, line 125) — the fragments could read as performed starkness, but they survive because the compression is motivated (Asha is wrapping her scarf and leaving for the bus), the register is her card's information-bearing shorthand, and attribution plus blocking ("wrapping her own scarf to the chin," "lifted a hand and went left toward the bus") are fully present. "Truck." (line 103) and "Before Friday." (line 127) remain schedule-true fragments, not starkness theater.

**6. JARGON-TRADING WITHOUT TRANSLATION: CLEAN** — unchanged from round 1's pass and re-verified through the revised lines. Strongest counter-candidate: "You want to spot-prime and feather it?" / "It'll flash. Twenty-two patches, it'll look like the wall has a rash." (lines 29–31) — translated in the same breath by the rash image. The new rate answer "High hundreds. Heat is weird. Freight elevator sticks. Twenty-four-hour access." (line 93) is weighable on contact; keys/W-2/after-hours still cash out through June's swatch-reading interiority (line 71).

**7. ATTRIBUTION OPACITY: CLEAN** — read with attributions covered. Strongest counter-candidate: the run from "How cheap is forgive?" through "That's as much pitch as I have" (lines 91–97) — survives because the two-hander alternation is anchored by beats (the balled sandwich paper, "Asha said" at line 97) and lane content (rates and leads are Asha's, vetting questions June's). The three-speaker walk-through stays legible; "It doesn't read the same." (line 117) can only be the artist.

**FAKE-SHARP: CLEAN** — the round 1 cluster is substantially de-polished; every flagged line was verified cut or replaced (see order-execution header). Pressed the replacements hard, for the record: (a) "I'd call. I don't know if I'd go." … "I've said yes to stable things that ate my painting time. I've also said no to rent money and hated myself by Tuesday. That's not advice." (line 103) — the yes/no parallel is composed-adjacent, but it survives: self-implicating, hedged, lopsided ("hated myself by Tuesday" is friction, not polish), and "That's not advice." is three plain retrospective words, not the round 1 preface's performance; this is Rule 8's chosen-friction, and it answers June's exposed question without a zinger. (b) "Don't make her chase you. That's rude even when everyone is broke." (line 129) — capper-shaped, but survives as speakable network etiquette with class texture; the balance of "Even a no should be fast. That's just manners." is gone. (c) "I can send you Dana's number. No speech required." (line 93) — survives the fake-sharp test (practical, tells June no performance is needed) and the diagnosis rule (it characterizes no one's actual language). (d) "She'd rather hand it to someone who won't microwave fish." and the lie-down-in-the-loading-dock hyperbole — overheard-true texture, sanctioned in round 1. (e) The strongest counter-candidate overall: "That's the whole pitch?" / "That's as much pitch as I have," Asha said. "Dana texts in nouns." (lines 95–97) — the renamed feed-and-punchline slot. As fake-sharp per se it narrowly survives (the punchline is three specific, speakable words of expectation-setting, not an industry taxonomy), but the line fails the book-specific rule below, and the surviving feed-slot is addressed in the same order.

**INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION: CLEAN** — the scene is not over-stripped: June's mind carries the reader ("the words *keys* and *after hours*, which she examined at the angle you would examine a swatch," line 71; the laugh-came-late paragraph, line 99; "kept this to herself with some effort," line 119; the new line 57 beat). Tested rule 9's second direction on the repair: "The cover had not worked." does not paraphrase any line of the exchange — it adds June's judgment and triggers action, so the scene is not explained twice. The cut of "which told her what her own silence had been worth" (now the plain "June brought it up anyway," line 73) removed round 1's one double-explaining residue without darkening the beat.

**DIALOGUE-DIAGNOSIS (reading guide §2, zero tolerance): FAIL** — one new instance, introduced by the rewrite. Asha: "That's as much pitch as I have," Asha said. "Dana texts in nouns." (line 97) — "Dana texts in nouns" characterizes a third party's language and phrasing habits, exactly the move round 1 failed in "She doesn't dress things up." (June rating Nia's phrasing); §2 forbids characters commenting on, characterizing, or rating one another's language "not once per chapter; not at all," and §6 makes any instance a defect "in any speaker's mouth." That the line is funny and card-plausible does not exempt it — perceptiveness must be shown by what a character does with what they heard (or, here, by what Dana *does*: sends a number, answers in one word on the page in Ch 22, whatever the continuity allows), never by captioning the communication. Both round 1 instances are confirmed removed (lines 83 and 87); this is the only diagnosis hit in the chapter — also pressed and surviving: "She made herself say so, internally, in those words." (line 109, June's own internal phrasing discipline, not speech), "a thumbs-up June had applied to it like a customs stamp" (line 63, an action simile, no language rated), and "No speech required." (line 93, anticipates that no performance is needed; characterizes nobody's actual language).

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## REVISION ORDERS

1. **(Dialogue diagnosis, zero tolerance — and the surviving feed-slot)** Lines 95–97: cut "Dana texts in nouns." It may not be replaced with any other characterization of Dana's (or anyone's) language, phrasing, or delivery. Deflate the whole meta-communication run the line sits in: either (a) cut June's feed line "That's the whole pitch?" and end the Dana beat on the practical offer — "I can send you Dana's number." plus a concrete noun from Asha's card lane (when Dana's reachable, what June should say she wants, which floor) — or (b) keep June's question but give Asha a flat, non-capper answer in her register (rate/room/load-in specifics, schedule shorthand), e.g. what Dana will want to know, nothing about how Dana communicates. Round 1 order 3(b) required this feed line cut; renaming "reference" to "pitch" is not execution. Acceptance test: the beat contains no comment on any character's language, and June's question (if kept) is not answered with a punchline.

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**Non-blocking note for the orchestrator (not a dialogue defect):** round 1 order 3(e) directed trimming Asha's recommendation beat toward her card line ("I can do the boring parts and still paint at night. I'm serious."); the rewrite deleted the beat entirely. Asha's voice card lists receiving June's Nia-recommendation as her premise-specific care-move payoff, and the chapter card sets "Asha for Ch 22." The want still surfaces ("stable things that ate my painting time," line 103), so the dialogue passes, but the seed's relocation or restoration should be confirmed by continuity before Ch 22 is drafted.

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**OVERALL: BLOCKING (1 finding)** — the book-specific zero-tolerance dialogue-diagnosis rule, on a line the rewrite itself introduced. All four round 1 findings (modes 1 and 3, FAKE-SHARP, and both original diagnosis instances) are verified resolved with evidence above. Per the audit contract, the remaining finding routes to an opposing-model rewrite (Codex lane); self-repair by the drafting model is not an accepted resolution. The repaired test-square interiority (line 57), the de-polished lunch sequence, and the relocated Kessler beat are sound and must be preserved through the fix.
