# Claude-Tic Audit - Chapter 17

Target: `output/chapters/chapter_17.md` after mechanical repairs from `output/drafts/claude/chapter_17.round_01.md`.

Mechanical input: per-chapter gate PASS, open=0, allowlisted=0. Chapter 17 WATCH groups: repeated descriptor 25; hands/body 8; trailing participle 3; and/but starts 1; key vocab cluster 1; texture words/iron 2; dialogue em dash 14; comma-list em dash 1; transition verb/shifted 1.

- `CLEAR — tic 1 em-dash/rhythm crutch — checked: all 15 remaining dashes — nearest miss: "The job is real — she pays me, there's a payroll service, I clock in, all of that is real — I was on the schedule before I—" — why it passes: this is Theo's over-explaining panic under June's interruption, not narrator rhythm filler.`
- `CLEAR — tic 2 shimmer prose — checked: discovery, walk, stair, ending — nearest miss: "the room going brown at the edges" — why it passes: this is a plate description in June's catalog work, not atmosphere drifting over action.`
- `CLEAR — tic 3 sentence-mood verbs — checked for mattered/earned/weighed/carried and equivalents — nearest miss: "The facts stood where they'd stood the last three times" — why it passes: the sentence is measurement/procedure language from June's craft mind, not a mood verb.`
- `CLEAR — tic 4 default-elegant noun phrases — checked for "a kind of," "something like," "small/quiet/careful" padding — nearest miss: "a centimeter of cream against the gray" — why it passes: literal paper-slip observation.`
- `CLEAR — tic 5 habitual qualifiers/softening — checked adverbs and hedges — nearest miss: "That was probably true" — why it passes: June concedes a narrow factual point before refusing its usefulness; the qualifier is moral precision, not momentum drain.`
- `CLEAR — tic 6 narrator-as-philosopher — checked reflective turns — no candidate found beyond focalized art-label logic. Strongest counter-candidate: "Same paint. Not one thing on the canvas had moved." It remains museum-work analogy tied to June's reclassification shock.`
- `CLEAR — tic 7 theme-explanation after beat — checked post-reveal paragraphs — no explanatory thesis after the confrontation close. Strongest counter-candidate: "Saying that isn't giving it back." The line is deictic pressure speech tied to Theo's preceding "I know," not a detachable lesson.`
- `CLEAR — tic 8 recursive negation — checked not/not-even patterns — nearest miss: "Not one thing on the canvas had moved" — why it passes: isolated literal contrast, not a recursive negation flourish.`
- `CLEAR — tic 9 self-aware meta-clauses — checked "if that was the word" family — no surviving candidate. Earlier face-diagnosis/self-commentary variants were cut during Dialogue Doctor and Plain Translation repairs.`
- `CLEAR — tic 10 over-balanced parallelism — checked paired clauses — nearest miss: "every Tuesday she had walked... and every Tuesday he had walked..." — why it passes: the parallelism is the asymmetry argument itself and creates the chapter's required one-sentence grievance.`
- `CLEAR — tic 11 profundity-stamp close — checked final paragraph — nearest miss: "At the corner she shifted the strap higher and kept going." — why it passes: closes on action after leaving, not a standalone maxim.`
- `CLEAR — tic 12 default lovely/quiet/small register — checked rupture scene for softening — no candidate found; the chapter stays on catalog, key, stair, record, and absence rather than prettifying the fight.`
- `CLEAR — tic 13 physical reaction replacing interiority — checked stress beats — nearest miss: "He flinched at the word" — why it passes: the flinch is an observed response to "aunt" after a sustained argument, not a substitute for Theo's interiority.`
- `BOOK-SPECIFIC CLEAR — no dialogue diagnosis — checked narration and speech for rating words about phrasing/rhythm/carefulness — nearest miss: "what this is" in "That's what this is" — why it passes: June identifies Theo's behavior as task-seeking, not the quality of his sentence.`
- `BOOK-SPECIFIC CLEAR — no protected reveal leakage — Odile's knowing remains hidden; the chapter reveals only Eileen/Theo family fact.`

WATCH-count reconciliation: high dialogue-dash count is real but local to interruption/confession pressure; repeated descriptor count is dominated by ordinary function words and chapter-specific terms (`catalog`, `room`, `key`) that are plot objects; hands/body count is concentrated in Theo's keys/box and June's catalog handling, not generic throat/chest shorthand.

Chapter verdict: `TIC-CLEAN`.

REVISION ORDERS: none.
