All inputs verified. Writing the round 3 audit as my final answer:

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# Audit: Comedy Doctor — Chapter 10, Round 3 (focused verification of the round 2 residual)

id: comedy_doctor | owner: claude | tier: risk | round: 3
chapter: `output/chapters/chapter_10.md` | register: comic, guide-mandated every chapter | target reader: warm/precise/lightly-comic per READING_GUIDE §2 (O'Leary warmth, Henry at 60% banter, Morisaki smallness)
round 2 source: `output/critiques/claude/chapter_10.comedy_doctor_round2.md` (one residual order: Odile quotability 6 against the ≤5 retention condition; surgical cut of the l.33 pity tail)
scope: residual order only, plus a regression sweep of the deletion site. Rounds 1–3 orders 1–3 stand verified from round 2 and were spot-checked unchanged (l.7 "empty the little bin by December," l.19 "Priya's good pen already uncapped," l.19 "riding high and uncovered," l.69 "Switch.", l.85 "He waited for the rest. She moved on." — all at the same line numbers round 2 quoted).

Stance: skeptical professional editor. The memo trail says one line was cut; the verification below checks that the cut happened, that the arithmetic now closes, that the surviving line still earns its place, and that nothing rode in with the deletion.

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## RESIDUAL ORDER VERIFICATION

**(Round 2 order 1: Odile quotability 6 → ≤5 via the l.33 pity tail) EXECUTED.** Before: "Only if coffee is the love of his life. If it is, I am sorry for both of you." Current l.33, in full: `"Only if coffee is the love of his life."` The pity tail is cut outright, nothing substituted. The exchange now runs Priya's straight feed ("Can Ben hold his coffee?", l.31), Odile's one-line conditional, and the scene moves immediately to Theo's sightline question (l.35) — no seam, no orphaned beat.

**Recount, same method as round 2.** Aphorism/quotable-grade Odile lines in the current text:
1. "It is always loose. It is how I learn things about people." (l.17)
2. "The room is finished, Brennan. Sit in it." (l.37)
3. "You are standing in her light." (l.79)
4. "Then you posed all evening. You just didn't know it." (l.99)
5. "Do not improve anything." (l.137)

**Count: 5. The ≤5 condition is met.** Margin candidates re-adjudicated under round 2's own rulings: "Folded hands are rest." (l.29) remains rule mechanics, not detachable wisdom; "You looked at one thing for an hour" (l.85) remains plain observation whose wit lives in the performed walk-away; and the surviving "Only if coffee is the love of his life." (l.33) does **not** enter the count — round 2 counted the pity tail as the aphorism-grade element of the pair, and the surviving conditional is non-detachable: it means nothing without Priya's question, Ben's coffee, and the card's love/good-for test. It is an answer, not a saying. All five survivors are the lines round 2 held by name, including "standing in her light," whose literal half is structural (he is blocking June's view of her subject).

**Coffee exchange re-scored post-trim.** Re-run as inventory item: «"Can Ben hold his coffee?" / "Only if coffee is the love of his life."» (l.31–33) — mechanism: conditional deadpan (the escalation-to-pity stage is gone; the conditional alone carries the turn) — source: character (Odile, Priya as straight feed) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: intact and unreduced — it still converts a prop question into the assignment's blade and still pre-cuts Theo's habit-candidates ("I could clean brushes... There's a right way to do it and I like the right way," l.49) before he offers them — workshopped: no. The trim arguably improves register fit: §2 says Odile "gets the best lines and the fewest," and the one-line answer is closer to her brutal economy than the two-stage version was. Strongest counter-case considered: that losing the pity tail flattens the joke to a mere ruling. It doesn't — the deflation now lives in Odile answering a logistics question as if it were a metaphysical one and refusing to elaborate, the same shape as "He waited for the rest. She moved on."

**No new portable / workshopped / oversweetened item.** The repair was a pure deletion; nothing was added at l.33 or anywhere else. Corroborating mechanical evidence: the gate's `legacy-uncontracted-casual-dialogue` count dropped from the ×9 the round 2 Dialogue Doctor swept to ×6 in the current report — consistent with exactly the cut sentence's three full forms ("If it **is**, I **am** sorry...") leaving the text and nothing stiff arriving. Gate open findings: 0. Sweetness check at the site: cutting Odile's *sympathy* line removes softening, not sharpness — the beats the book wants sharp ("and that was the trouble with it," l.93; "Then you posed all evening," l.99; "It did not say, what can you do correctly," l.141) stand untouched. The paper plate (l.73) remains the chapter's cuteness ceiling; nothing was added above it.

## DISTRIBUTION (delta from round 2 only):
- Inventory: 36 → 35 items (item 9 reduced, still scores 2); all 35 funniness-2, zero portable, zero workshopped, narrator-overlay 0.
- Odile quotable-grade count: **5, at the ceiling** — record this as spent; any new Odile aphorism in a later revision touch of this chapter puts it back over.
- Density, mechanism variety, sweetness, cringe: unchanged from round 2's CLEAR findings; the deletion touched one mechanism stage of one item.

## CHAPTER VERDICT: **CLEAR** — comedy lands in register: 35 of 35 items funniness-2, character/situation-sourced throughout, non-portable, mechanisms varied, and the verdict-level tracker breach is resolved at exactly the ordered number. Strongest surviving item: «"It's very him," Mara said, and meant it kindly, and that was the trouble with it.» (l.93). Weakest surviving item: «Calling it early would have misunderstood the job.» (l.9) — the stiff first clause noted in rounds 1 and 2 stands unchanged; its second sentence still rescues it; non-blocking then and now.

## REVISION ORDERS: none.

The round 2 residual is executed and verified; no regression was introduced. The chapter is committable from this audit's standpoint. **For the orchestrator, not a text order:** `output/tics.md` still has no Chapter 10 row — the round 1/round 2 instruction to append the final Odile quotability count (5, target met) on commit remains outstanding and should be done when this chapter is committed.
