The audit is written. Here is the completed document.

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# Audit: Comedy Doctor — Chapter 24: First Snow

id: comedy_doctor | chapter: 24 | owner: claude | tier: risk
binding: `checks/audits/comedy_doctor.md`
inputs: `output/chapters/chapter_24.md` · `premise/READING_GUIDE.md` · `output/style_and_voice.md` · `output/tics.md` · `output/outline/chapter_cards.md` (CARD 24) · `output/critiques/claude/chapter_24.dialogue_doctor.md` (Round 2, OVERALL: CLEAN)

## Stance & calibration
Skeptical editor, not coach. Target reader = the reading guide's comp reader: Beth O'Leary warmth + Emily Henry at ~60% banter + *Morisaki Bookshop* / *Before the Coffee Gets Cold* quiet. Committed register: "warm, precise, lightly comic; quiet interiority over quippiness; observational and character-true; never sitcom." I score against THAT register: a warm recognition-smile that fully achieves its warm-low aim rates funniness-2 here, and I do not fail a line for declining a workshop-laugh the book never promised. Conversely I hunt the LLM default — narrator-overlay epigram painted over a specific scene — and I hold the portable/workshopped rules mechanically. Every pass below carries per-criterion evidence and the strongest counter-candidate weighed.

## INVENTORY
1 — "She left it a tower and counted that, privately, as growth." (l.3) — mechanism: ironic self-assessment / deflation of a self-help frame — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: seats June's arc (a composer-of-rooms choosing not to compose) and her wound (performance as avoidance) — workshopped: no
2 — "the radiator sounded like it was trying to leave the building" (l.7) — mechanism: personification / incongruity — source: character (Sam, reported) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: dissolves June's braced-for-bad dread; marks the night as warm not feared — workshopped: no
3 — "the dread turned out to be the kind you only get to have in advance" (l.7) — mechanism: paradox / deflation (anticipatory-dread epigram) — source: narrator-overlay — funniness: 2 — portable: YES — dramatic work: lands the chapter's opening emotional turn — workshopped: YES  **[BLOCKING — F1]**
4 — "It was a good flyer." (l.9) — mechanism: deadpan understatement — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: releases the empty-room/full-room beat; honors Ben without sentiment — workshopped: no
5 — "Sam's big loose canvas that was either a dog or a sofa and refused to commit" (l.11) — mechanism: incongruity + personification — source: situation/character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: characterizes Sam and the cohort's range of work — workshopped: no
6 — "It's meant to lean," / "I've got a level in the car. Two minutes." (l.27–29) — mechanism: character collision (installer's fix-reflex vs. artist's on-purpose imperfection) + Theo's restraint — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: pays Theo's arc (declines the pentimento sermon) and Sam's care-move — workshopped: no
7 — Sam's "Huh" "in the tone of a man filing something away" / "stepping aside before anyone had to ask" (l.31) — mechanism: deadpan + warm character-narration — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Sam's owned care-move (yielding sightlines) — workshopped: no
8 — "I washed it… Twice. Once for no reason. Here." (l.37–38) — mechanism: deadpan over-precision / self-deprecation — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: shows June's investment in the dish-tether friendship — workshopped: no
9 — "'Luis, put it over by the--' / Luis was already moving." (l.39–41) — mechanism: comic timing / anticipation (pre-emption) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: pays Luis's care-move AND inverts the Mara-translates-Luis arc in one beat — workshopped: no
10 — "closed her mouth and let the dish sit there saying exactly what Luis wanted it to say and nothing extra" (l.43) — mechanism: arc-reversal comedy + light object-personification — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Mara's arc payoff (stops over-glossing Luis) — workshopped: no
11 — "June took it. It had too much milk." (l.45) — mechanism: deadpan undercut of a care gesture — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Priya's care-as-projection + her arc (learning to ask) — workshopped: no
12 — "left it a half-degree off level on purpose, and walked away. For Ben, practically skywriting." (l.47) — mechanism: hyperbole / incongruity (tiny act framed as flamboyance) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Ben's loosening arc — workshopped: no
13 — "Practice… And I say mine to myself later. Worse for you, better for the party." (l.75) — mechanism: antithesis / deflection-by-joke — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: June's carded deflection after Theo's vulnerable admission; renders intimacy sideways — workshopped: no (at edge)
14 — "Bring it whenever… That's why dishes exist." (l.79) — mechanism: poignant-comic self-correction + warm care-maxim — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: last-Tuesday ache made survivable; blue-dish tether payoff — workshopped: no (at edge)
15 — "Sign yourself out too… You're work that left the building. I keep a record." (l.113) — mechanism: insult-as-diagnosis / register collision (June as inventory) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Odile's care disguised as logistics; primes the ledger reveal — workshopped: no
16 — "I'm retiring, not dead." (l.125) — mechanism: anti-sentimental deadpan / deflation — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (function-anchored; see notes) — dramatic work: names Odile's motive as appetite not sentiment; refuses the dying-mentor frame at the reveal — workshopped: no
17 — "she liked him so much in that second it was faintly annoying." (l.145) — mechanism: deflation / self-deprecation (undercutting her own tenderness) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: renders June's feeling through her signature deflection (desire treated as evidence against herself) — workshopped: no
18 — "The warm coat was a February problem, a Kessler-in-March problem, an eight-hundred-dollars-by-Thursday problem." (l.155) — mechanism: escalating list / specificity (money anxiety as comic triple) — source: character/situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: keeps the earned-stay precarity present under the warmth — workshopped: no
19 — "I come back and hand two rich people some drawings. That's it. I'm not carrying anything." (l.157) — mechanism: deflation (Halloran collectors reduced) + Theo self-correcting his usefulness reflex — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Theo's arc + June's independence (she carries her own things) — workshopped: no
20 — "Sam's dog-or-sofa, back whenever Sam surfaced." (l.85) — mechanism: repetition-with-variation (callback of #5) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: check-out logistics; cohort texture — workshopped: no

## Running-gag check
**dog-or-sofa** — 2 instances: l.11 seed, l.85 callback. No book-level cap registered (Ch24-local). l.85 *varies* (compresses to the fixed compound noun "dog-or-sofa," a now-known thing, plus the dry "back whenever Sam surfaced"); it does not re-run the joke. Within tolerance.
Note a minor cross-item echo of the **indecision-personification** mechanism: #5 canvas "refused to commit," and the snow at l.149 "can't yet decide if it means it." Different objects, different scenes, ~140 lines apart; reads as motif rhyme (the season/work both un-set), not a repeated bit. Not monotony.

## Distribution checks
- **Density vs. register.** Healthy for a quiet finale. Warm-low comic beats land in every scene (urn, wall-lean, dish, coffee, debrief, goodbye, ledger, corner). The register's payload here is the snow and the Odile reveal; comedy is correctly the connective warmth, not the event. Not DRY, not CLEAR-BUT-THIN.
- **Source.** 19 of 20 items character/situation-sourced; the lone narrator-overlay is #3 (blocked). The chapter is funny *inside* the book, not witty *at* it. Counter-candidate weighed: #10's "who two months ago would have translated that into a warm gloss…" edges toward narrator-explaining-the-arc, but the comic engine (the reversal itself) is Mara's and it is dramatized in her action (closing her mouth). Survives as character.
- **Funniness.** Majority-2 in-register. No item was scored 1: none *aims* at a comic turn and under-delivers. The low-heat beats (#7, #14, #18) aim at warm-character work and achieve it, which rates 2 in this register — scoring them 1 would penalize the book's committed quiet-wry mode, which the audit forbids.
- **Mechanism variety.** Personification (#2,5), deadpan/understatement (#4,7,11,16), self-deprecation (#1,8,17), hyperbole/incongruity (#12), comic timing/pre-emption (#9), antithesis (#13), insult-as-diagnosis (#15), arc-reversal (#10,19), escalating list (#18), paradox (#3). No mechanism recurs item-after-item. Not MONOTONOUS.
- **Sweetness.** Controlled at each risk point. Mara's goodbye is capped by action, not lingered ("hugged June hard and practical and let go before it could become a scene," l.79). The reveal is held sharp — see below. Not OVERSWEETENED.
- **Cringe.** None. No item misjudges the target reader; no art-world contempt (Sam's installer-reflex and the "two rich people" collectors are teased warmly, not sneered at, satisfying the guide's no-contempt rule).
- **Cohort warmth — found-family-slogan watch.** No group absolution speech; warmth is distributed through *owned* care-moves (Luis's placement, Priya's coffee, Mara's dish, Ben's flyer, Sam's yielded sightline), not a communal declaration. Closest to a slogan is #14 "That's why dishes exist"; it stays a single small line, tied to the specific blue-dish tether and immediately deflated by "let go before it could become a scene." Clear, with sweetness-watch noted.

## Focus checks (per brief)
- **Snow close not undercut.** The final image is rendered straight in June's painter-eye — "the fat slow kind that can't yet decide if it means it," "a cone of it turning over the sidewalk," "landing on nothing anyone could see," "the glare swallowed it… She had to look where the street went black." Theo's "It won't stick… It'll be wet by morning" is literal, not a joke. The one comic beat near the close (#19, "two rich people some drawings") lands *before* the walk and gives way to the unjoked snow-walk and kiss; the closing line "eight hundred dollars due Thursday, and she went" is dry-earnest (the earned-stay thesis), not a punchline. Not undercut.
- **Odile reveal not undercut.** #16 "I'm retiring, not dead" caps the reveal rather than deflecting from it — it *is* the weight (appetite, not sentiment; refusal to be handled). June immediately holds her accountable ("It wasn't yours to run," l.129), so the beat stays sharp. No oracle monologue; Odile keeps few lines. Not undercut.
- **Resurrection sweep (verified against current text).**
  - `which` captions: 0. Grep for `\bwhich\b` returns nothing; the only `whole` is literal duration ("the whole week," l.91). The `whole`/`which` caption family is dead.
  - Economy / word-count captions ("four words carry it," "let it land"): 0 in narration. The three surviving word-counts size *scale*, not craft — "two words at an urn" (l.57), "sayable in two words by a woman with a good eye" (l.69), "two words with nothing after them" (l.131); each is followed by June doing something with the utterance, not grading it. Consistent with the Dialogue Doctor Round 2 CLEAN.
  - Sentence-quality / dialogue-diagnosis: 0. The Round 1 hits (l.29 "let four words carry it," l.45 "it landed as a thing she'd decided to stand behind") are gone; no replacement diagnosis surfaced. The one figurative "carry" is Priya's "It's carrying the picture" (l.47) — a painting carrying, lay-appreciation, not a caption on speech.

## CHAPTER VERDICT

**CLEAR** — comedy lands in register: 19/20 items character/situation-sourced, majority funniness-2, mechanisms varied, warmth controlled, snow and reveal un-undercut, no found-family slogan, and every repair (which/whole captions, economy captions, dialogue diagnosis, weather-as-feeling) holds against the current text.

**One blocking item-level finding stands (F1), so the chapter is not committable until it is resolved.** Under the audit's blocking rule (portable:yes and workshopped:yes are each blocking regardless of chapter verdict), item #3 must be revised. It is a distribution outlier, not a distribution failure — hence CLEAR verdict, one order.

- **Strongest surviving item:** #9 — "'Luis, put it over by the--' / Luis was already moving." The most non-portable and hardest-working beat in the chapter: pure comic timing that pays two arcs at once (Luis's placement-care and the inversion of Mara-translating-Luis), impossible to lift into another book because the laugh *is* these two people's eight-week history. Runner-up: #19, "hand two rich people some drawings… I'm not carrying anything."
- **Weakest surviving (clean) item:** #13 — "Worse for you, better for the party." The neat antithesis is the most composed syntax that clears; it survives only because it is June's *carded* deflection (jokes as smoke screen is her specified register) arising from Theo's pocket-paragraphs, not a placed quotable. Held at edge, not blocked.
- **Watch (not blocking):** #16 "I'm retiring, not dead" — the meaning is Odile-specific (appetite-over-sentiment at the reveal), so it clears on function, but the "I'm X, not dead" *frame* is the chapter's second-most-portable surface. If a future touch adds another stock-frame Odile quip, this becomes a portability problem. Do not add one.

## REVISION ORDERS

**1. (F1 — item #3) — l.7 "the dread turned out to be the kind you only get to have in advance."**
Failure: portable narrator-overlay epigram (blocking on two axes — portable:yes, workshopped:yes). The clause's humor is a general observation about anticipatory dread, liftable unchanged into any anxious character in any book; it is a wisdom-layer painted over June's specific arrival, not built from her painter-world. It is the one line in the chapter that reaches for a quotable instead of this book's material — the tell is the contrast with #1 ("counted that, privately, as growth") and #8 ("Once for no reason"), whose self-deprecation is anchored to June's anti-composition arc and dish-nerves and therefore clears, while this one floats free.
Fix: re-source the relief into June's optical/material register — let what she is actually *doing or seeing* at the urn register the dread's failure to arrive (voice card June: "perception first, judgment second"; "uses visual/craft nouns instead of big feeling words") — or simply trim the clause and let the concrete reversal already in the sentence carry the turn ("Instead she was at the urn in the good sweater pouring burnt coffee for Sam Rivera… and she was laughing"). Do not swap in a second epigram; replace portable wit with book-specific material. Cutting the clause outright is an acceptable execution; softening it into a gentler aphorism is not.
