# Chapter 16 Initial Draft Assessment

Target: `output/drafts/claude/chapter_16.round_01.md`

Verdict: ACCEPT AS BASE WITH REQUIRED INTEGRATION REPAIRS.

## What Works

- The packet's most important structural guardrail holds: the chapter opens through Mara/the flyer/class action, not another solitary Theo clerical setup.
- Theo remains ignorant of the Tasker offer, Dec 4 deadline, Asha, Dana, and Kessler.
- The catalog reveal remains protected. The draft ends with Theo thinking about the nine gray-spined catalogs and paper slip, but June does not read the acknowledgment page.
- The four fear objects are present and legible:
  - Theo's wrong-first June fear: boxes, keys, emptied wall.
  - Theo's truer June fear: the erased-wall memory painted through the moving boxes.
  - June's Theo fear: his useful hands setting Odile's room while his own ground waits blank.
  - Public room reaction: the cohort goes raw through stopped action rather than explanation.
- Odile stays material and exacting; she does not reveal knowledge or become an oracle.
- The emotional engine is strong enough to keep: June's painting of Theo is the chapter's best object, and Theo's failed disclosure after class correctly delays the rupture.

## Raw Draft Problems

- Mechanical gate on the raw draft failed: PASS not achieved; open=10, WATCH=75. Preserved at `output/critiques/codex/mechanical/chapter_16_raw_quality_gate_report.md`.
- Raw mechanical blockers:
  - one-sentence paragraph gravity over cap.
  - banned echo-line construction: `He knew her lease ended. He knew...`
  - banned comma-then/sequential-action pairs in the room-stopping/circling passages.
- Claude/default-prose risks to repair before integration:
  - over-composed commentary: `specific nausea`, `which from Luis was a paragraph`, `the painting liked him`, `to anyone with eyes`, and the closing fuse/ledger metaphor.
  - personification/room agency: `the room turned itself inside out`, `the wall's last argument`, and `even that felt like an exhibit`.
  - too-polished emotional exposition around Theo's realization that he filed June's memory as anecdote.
  - dialogue that may trigger Dialogue Doctor/Comedy Doctor: Mara's `You both look like you mean it`, Sam's `Now it does the work`, and Odile's `Pairs hang together or they lie`.
  - final delay thought `There would be a better Tuesday for it` is structurally right but may read too thesis-clean unless grounded in a more Theo-specific avoidance action.

## Integration Direction

- Use Claude's draft as the prose base.
- First repair mechanical blockers and obvious tic clusters before any judgment audit.
- Preserve the opening/public flyer pressure and the fear-painting sequence.
- Keep the close on delay and catalog danger, but remove the fuse-as-care flourish.
- Do not add Tasker/offer knowledge to Theo.
- Do not let June discover the acknowledgment page.
- Do not explain the paintings in dialogue; clarify only through blocking, image order, and Theo's local perception.

## Current State

- Raw draft word count: 2,647.
- Next action: integrate to `output/chapters/chapter_16.md`, repair raw mechanical blockers, run Claude-tic audit and the Chapter 16 audit stack.
