# Counter-Strip Audit - Chapter 13

Header: pre/post word counts: Claude raw 3,228 / current integrated 2,957; delta -8.4%; sample size 10 cuts/recasts. Author-direction notes: reading guide zero-tolerance for dialogue/narration phrasing commentary, legal/clerical figures, motif caps, and Claude/Codex tic reductions.

- JUSTIFIED - cut: "like a witness she'd been instructed to paint under oath" - evidence: initial assessment flagged legal/clerical figures; reading guide does not want under-oath phrasing.
- JUSTIFIED - cut: "operated like surgery" - evidence: shimmer/default-elegant figure and over-forced Odile staging; replaced by physical back-to-back easel logistics and Theo's audible jar behind June.
- JUSTIFIED - cut: "I will know" - evidence: Odile over-oracle risk; final instruction is less quotable and more teacherly.
- JUSTIFIED - cut: "Luis says Theo carries things before you know you're holding them" - evidence: Mara wise-overread flagged in initial assessment; cut avoids mentor/social oracle drift.
- JUSTIFIED - cut: "The photo, when it surfaced in the group thread later that night..." - evidence: final chapter needs photo pressure held as a live one-day clock; raw line prematurely resolved circulation.
- JUSTIFIED - cut: "audited the kiss on craft grounds" and "The file would not close" - evidence: legal/clerical register and dialogue/narration diagnosis drift; replaced with action and Priya's functional pickup.
- JUSTIFIED - cut: "I know it's no trouble. That's never been the question with you" - evidence: too on-the-nose Theo/usefulness diagnosis before rupture; current sidewalk keeps the issue implicit.
- JUSTIFIED - cut: "where the light was already green and there was nothing to do but cross" - evidence: light motif cap and false-profundity risk; final uses traffic signal as action.
- JUSTIFIED - cut: "The room made every partner a wall" - evidence: Figuration Audit found it was a portable wall maxim; the preceding sentence carries the pressure with better specificity.
- JUSTIFIED - cut: "The word showcase landed exactly where June had been keeping December" - evidence: Figuration Audit found word-as-object impact caption; current text uses literal packet-to-room consequence.

Chapter verdict: `NONE OVER-CUT`.
