# Chapter 22 Claude-Tic Audit - Current Integrated Text

CLEAR - tic 1 em-dash overuse - checked full chapter and quality gate; nearest miss: none in prose dialogue rhythm. No em-dash crutch remains.

CLEAR - tic 2 shimmer prose - checked opening, diner confession, portrait, kiss, close. Nearest miss: "cobalt going almost green where the glaze thinned at the rim" (line 3) passes because it is June's painterly observation of the blue dish, not atmosphere drift.

CLEAR - tic 3 recurring mood verbs - checked `mattered`, `earned`, `weighed`, `carried`. Nearest miss: "Her life had earned one confusing receipt" (line 143) is a single comic object verdict, not recurring mood diction.

CLEAR - tic 4 elegant noun phrases - checked `a kind of`, `something like`, `small/quiet/careful`. Nearest miss: "Keep doing the quiet version" (line 141) is June's spoken instruction to Theo's behavior, not narrator-elegant softness.

CLEAR - tic 5 softening qualifiers - checked "maybe", "just", "really", "probably". Nearest miss: "Primer, or maybe just white paint" (line 73) passes because June is accurately distinguishing a visual material, not hedging emotion.

CLEAR - tic 6 narrator-as-philosopher intrusion - checked for wisdom inserts. Nearest miss: "That happened because the terms are set. Not instead of them" (line 167) is June's direct boundary after a kiss, not narrator philosophy.

CLEAR - tic 7 theme-explanation after beat - checked post-apology, post-portrait, post-kiss. Nearest miss: "That's mine now. The deciding part." (line 131) states June's consent term in dialogue; it does not gloss the scene from above.

CLEAR - tic 8 recursive negation - checked "not" clusters. Nearest miss: "Not to Odile, not to a wall, not to anything with a guest list" (line 131) is a concrete consent exclusion list, not a false-profound cascade.

CLEAR - tic 9 self-aware meta-clause - checked `if that was the word`, `if there was a word`, equivalent. Nearest miss: "if we're dating things now" (line 79) is June's dry literal date/accounting joke inside confession, not a meta-poetic hedge.

CLEAR - tic 10 over-balanced sentence structures - checked parallel clauses. Nearest miss: "If you were going... Since you're staying..." (line 99) passes because Theo is making a measured, bounded response that June immediately misreads as contingency planning; the chapter charges the composure instead of certifying it.

CLEAR - tic 11 short profundity stamp - checked all scene endings. Nearest miss: final "with the dish waiting by the door" (line 179) passes because it is object placement and Ch23 setup, not a lesson stamp.

CLEAR - tic 12 default lovely/quiet/small register - checked high-pressure confession/kiss. Nearest miss: "brief because she made it brief" (line 165) keeps the kiss governed and unspectacular per card; it does not shrink a scene that should be loud.

CLEAR - tic 13 body reaction defaults - checked heartbeat/throat/breath/body shorthand. Nearest miss: "He went still, cup halfway back to the table" (line 89) is visible blocking that changes the exchange, not stock bodily interiority.

Book-specific tic checks: deflecting-tag family is at four with the vacancy frozen by Comedy Doctor round 5; `just coffee` is spent at four; conduct grades are at two after the Characters-Wrong repair; `Oh` appears once; no new filing/memorizing/captions grew back after repairs.

WATCH-count reconciliation: quality gate PASS open=0, WATCH=37. WATCH families are licensed or tracked: repeated descriptor density is mostly concrete object/action recurrence in scene 2; uncontracted casual dialogue is June's full-form pressure register; ellipses occur only in June's unfinished admission and are Dialogue/Positive Prose cleared; temperature watch is the sweater/cold-nose thread.

Chapter verdict: TIC-CLEAN.

REVISION ORDERS: none.
