# Chapter 21 Claude-Tic Audit

## Verdict

CLAUDE-TICS FOUND IN RAW/INTERMEDIATE DRAFTS; repair batches and current-text Claude audits have removed the blockers. No chapter-level tic order remains open.

## Findings

1. **Em-dash rhythm crutch.** Raw draft had 26 em dashes and failed the cap. Initial integration converted most to commas, colons, periods, or hyphens.

2. **Default-elegant abstractions.** Raw/intermediate lines such as `count first, feel later`, `the only honest object`, and `standing in a room he had not arranged` carried pressure but were cut or recast by the Positive Prose, Plain Translation, Narrator-Publicist, and Characters-Wrong repair sequence.

3. **Narrator-as-philosopher tendency.** The raw line `Everyone who needed to know now knew, which was the whole problem stated in one sentence` was cut to concrete knowledge state: `June knew. Odile knew.`

4. **Self-aware permission clauses.** Four `let himself` constructions appeared in the raw draft and were repaired.

5. **Recursive/parallel negation.** Raw `Not flattering. Not proof...` was repaired to a direct sentence.

6. **Echo-line poetics.** Raw `She could say no... She could say nothing...` and `She had picked... She had put...` were repaired.

7. **Physical specificity strength.** The draft's best material is concrete: returned catalog box, loan sheet, O.M. initials, fear canvas wire, drill, hidden glassine, stretcher-bar label, and the study faced to the wall. Preserve this as the chapter's base strength.

## Final Disposition

Initial integration repaired all mechanical blockers and canon-name drift. The 2026-07-04 tic repair batch cut the portrait thesis captions (`only honest object`, `thirty-nine years... design`), the `mattered` sentence, and over-elegant consent metaphors. Dialogue Doctor then cleared the repaired dialogue; Comedy Doctor, Narrator-Publicist, Positive Prose, Plain Translation, Thought Development, and Characters-Wrong all re-ran on the current text and returned clean verdicts. Current watch items are motif-density only (`hands`, `keys`, `route`, `door`) and are tracked in `output/tics.md` / Ch22 cards, not blockers for Ch21.
