# Claude-Tic Audit — Chapter 23 Current Text

Target: `output/chapters/chapter_23.md` after Dialogue, Comedy, Positive Prose, and Clarity repairs.

- `CLEAR — tic 1 em-dash overuse` — checked all dashes; nearest miss: Theo's archive line, `"Top half's archive — condition reports..."`, and the withheld-help inventory at L83. Both are functional apposition/list pressure, not rhythm crutch. Count is low and not scene-ending.
- `CLEAR — tic 2 shimmer prose` — checked craft and threshold passages; nearest miss: `"Her room, going down into the dark around a doorway that used to be a spill"` (L119). It survives because the dark is literal paint process tied to the umber stain.
- `CLEAR — tic 3 mood verbs` — checked for mattered/earned/weighed/carried family; nearest miss: `"carried nine catalogs"` (L5) is literal.
- `CLEAR — tic 4 default-elegant noun phrases` — checked for `a kind of`, `something like`, `small/quiet/careful`; nearest miss: `"a single sheet"` (L21), literal object.
- `CLEAR — tic 5 habitual qualifiers` — checked softening adverbs; nearest miss: `"nearly bare ground"` (L7), a precise painting-state qualifier.
- `CLEAR — tic 6 narrator-as-philosopher` — checked reflective passages; nearest miss: `"some of the old reflex was only knowing where a good hinge lived"` (L3). It stays in Theo's chair/action logic.
- `CLEAR — tic 7 theme gloss after beat` — checked final sentences and chapter turns; nearest miss: `"it was a finished thing standing in a room that was about to have people in it"` (L163). It names placement/consequence, not moral.
- `CLEAR — tic 8 recursive negation` — checked `not X, not Y` shapes; nearest miss: `"not canted to catch anyone from the door"` (L163), a single functional negative.
- `CLEAR — tic 9 self-aware meta-clause` — checked `if that was the word`; nearest miss: `"Pentimento, the word for it"` (L65), explicit art vocabulary, not self-aware hedging.
- `CLEAR — tic 10 over-balanced parallelism` — checked sentence pairs; nearest miss: `"The door closing, the chairs turned away, the table running away..."` (L39). It is a four-panel inventory matching four physical panels, not ornamental balance.
- `CLEAR — tic 11 profundity stamp close` — chapter closes on `"Theo went to prop the second door"` (L177), action, not a single-sentence profundity stamp.
- `CLEAR — tic 12 default lovely/quiet/small register` — checked quiet payoff passages; nearest miss: `"four small panels"` (L35), literal size.
- `CLEAR — tic 13 default body reaction beats` — checked hands/throat/heart reflexes; nearest miss: `"He kept his hands at his sides"` (L119), a premise-specific non-fixing action.

Book-specific calibration:
- `the way [X]` recognitional simile: repaired; current hits are literal (`a third of the way`, `on the way out`) only.
- `, which` deadpan captions: repaired; remaining `which` clauses are functional inference/logistics (`which told him`, `which meant Priya...`) and Comedy Doctor round 3 marks them WATCH only.
- `a lie with X`, `the math`, `whole of`, `just coffee`, conduct-grade praise, `Noted`: grep-clean or non-matching in current text.
- `Good` adjacency: `"Good. It should."` (L89) is world-affirmation about Asha's offer, not conduct grading; Comedy Doctor round 3 marks WATCH, not blocking.

WATCH reconciliation: current quality gate reports `open=0`, `watch=65`, led by repeated descriptors, hand/body terms, trailing participles, and `wp-aivocab-cluster` from `showcase`. The watch clusters were routed through Comedy Doctor, Positive Prose, and Clarity; all returned clean on current text after repairs.

Chapter verdict: `TIC-CLEAN`. Revision orders: none.
