# Mode A Architecture Audit — *Eight Tuesdays*

**Verdict: DEFAULTS-FOUND.** Two headline findings before the per-element evidence:

**Finding 1 — the default has been located, twice, independently.** Codex Candidate A and Claude Map 1 are the same chapter map produced by two different generators: ~25–28 chapters, strict June-odd/Theo-even alternation, one class chapter plus one aftermath chapter per week, discovery via labeled family photo, truth-to-class "met warmly." Both even apologize for it in the same words — Codex A: "Risk: Can become too metronomic: class, aftermath, class, aftermath" (`codex_candidate_maps.md:67`); Map 1: "Biggest structural risk: Metronome flatline" (`round_1_independent_maps.md:42`). When two independent generators emit the same map *and the same self-diagnosis*, that map is the genre default for this premise. It is the control group, not a candidate.

**Finding 2 — the Codex trio is one book at three zoom settings; real divergence was purchased only by rule-breaking.** Codex A/B/C share beat order and even chapter positions: Tuesday 1 lands at ch 3 in both A and B; the work/apartment chapter at ch 5 in both; Turn 3 at ch 21 in both; the kiss-plus-offer midpoint is the same beat in all three (A ch 15, B ch 15, C ch 13). B is A plus a named cast; C is A compressed plus a longer rupture. Meanwhile the only maps that genuinely re-architect anything — Claude Maps 2 and 3 — both violate the Reading Guide's form binding ("dual POV alternating by chapter… two consecutive June chapters during the rupture are permitted, once," `READING_GUIDE.md:9`): Map 2 runs a 19/9 POV split with a four-chapter June run (chs 19–22); Map 3 uses present-tense June-only interstitials against the past-tense binding. So the current pool offers compliant sameness or non-compliant invention, and the Working Hybrid chose sameness. No full re-brainstorm is needed — the parts exist — but the synthesis failed and must be redone per the orders below.

---

## Per-element verdicts

```text
1. Codex Candidate A — The Clean Assignment Ladder — DEFAULT
  obvious version: fake-dating clock rendered as class-chapter/aftermath-chapter pairs in strict alternation, every turn landing exactly where the premise sentence already put it.
  competent-but-derivative version: the same, with a found-document discovery and a tasteful interior for the joint piece.
  what this book adds: nothing — chapter functions transcribe premise lines ("memory portrait: Turn 1, both paintings reveal memorized attention," :33, restates premise.md:54), and the discovery hedges with "old archive photo/contact sheet or shipping form" (:59) — an undecided disjunction is not a design.
  deepens premise or decorative: neither; it is a scheduler. Its own author concedes the engine: "too metronomic: class, aftermath, class, aftermath" (:67).
  downstream story energy: none beyond what the premise already supplies; the "empty table/studio sink" joint piece (:61) is the only original object, and C supersedes it.
```

```text
2. Codex Candidate B — The Cohort Commons Weave — DERIVATIVE (imports the knowing-friend trope and central-casting found family onto A's map)
  obvious version: three mirror-couples — wise long-married elders, too-fast young couple, the "modern" unlabeled pair — each delivering a theme the leads need to hear.
  competent-but-derivative version: exactly B's casting — retired teacher + retired MTA worker as salt-of-the-earth NYC, plus arcs stated as theses ("admitting practical compatibility is not the same as readiness," :78).
  what this book adds: one genuinely new rule — Odile "quietly redefined 'couple' after Sam/Ruth years earlier, making the rule more elastic than advertised" (:122) — and one argued choice: the diner booth because "the diner is the cohort commons and later becomes theirs privately" (:123). The map beneath the cast is A's: chs 1–9 are function-identical at identical positions, Turn 3 at ch 21 in both.
  deepens premise or decorative: the Sam/Ruth precedent deepens (it makes the rule a fact about Odile's pedagogy); the mirror-arcs as written are decorative thesis-delivery.
  downstream story energy: "cohort feels the absence before knowing why" (:106) is the best ensemble-rupture beat in the Codex set; Ruth's oblique warning (:103) is usable once her misread is specified (see element 8).
```

```text
3. Codex Candidate C — The Rupture-Weighted Offer Clock — DERIVATIVE (imports the visit-the-new-city-and-find-it-hollow beat at its load-bearing chapter)
  obvious version: rupture as a one-chapter sulk, repaired by chase; the rival city visited and found wanting.
  competent-but-derivative version: offer seeded early as a clock (good craft, not invention), rupture given room, city still quietly strawmanned.
  what this book adds: three real components — the two-panel joint piece (:172), the "partners" corrected to "couples" reread clue (:173), and the only Codex use of the sanctioned consecutive-June flex (chs 17–18). But ch 20, "discovers what the offer cannot supply" (:159), is the exact beat the premise bans ("it must be *good*, not a strawman," premise.md:56) and the hybrid's own risk list bans ("June cannot simply discover it is secretly bad," hybrid:89); and ch 24's "declines/defer-modifies" (:163) is a hedge — deferral lets June have both, which the premise's "having chosen the city rather than defaulted to it" forbids.
  deepens premise or decorative: the rupture corridor and joint piece deepen; the offer handling regresses.
  downstream story energy: the unreconciled two-panel canvas is a physical barometer later chapters can read without dialogue.
```

```text
4. Codex Working Hybrid Notes — DERIVATIVE (of its own candidate set: A's metronome wearing B's cast, with C's mechanics shed)
  obvious version: a "synthesis" that takes the labels of the bolder candidates and the spine of the safe one.
  competent-but-derivative version: precisely this document.
  what this book adds: the smoking gun is "No consecutive June chapters currently needed" (:9) — it drops C's one structural feature while :183 of the candidates file named C's "longer rupture/repair corridor" as the reason to hybridize. The rupture corridor (chs 19–25) strict-alternates, giving Theo equal pen during June's silence and dissolving the asymmetry the rupture is ABOUT. The decline sits at ch 27, after the ch-25 confession — weakest available earned-stay sequencing (READING_GUIDE.md:86). Chapters 03–04 spend two chapters on the pre-class gap against its own warning that "the gap must feel like pressure, not delay" (:88). Genuine additions: the Philadelphia/Nia offer specifics (:45), the "After Class" joint piece (:47), the partner/pair/couple drift clue (:48).
  deepens premise or decorative: the question decisions deepen; the spine is the default restored.
  downstream story energy: the offer specifics and joint piece carry; the spine contributes nothing the premise didn't.
```

```text
5. Claude Map 1 — The Syllabus — DEFAULT
  obvious version: this map — it converges with Codex A chapter-for-chapter despite independent generation, which is the proof of defaultness.
  competent-but-derivative version: identical; even the differentiators are descriptions of alternation, not additions ("double dramatic irony every other chapter," :40, is what alternation always does).
  what this book adds: nothing structural; discovery is the convergent labeled family photo (:30); the class learns the truth "met warmly" (:36). Worst beat in any map: June declines the offer at ch 25, AFTER the confession and after Odile's blessing (:37–38) — maximally exposed to the staying-for-a-boyfriend reading the guide's earned-stay test exists to kill.
  deepens premise or decorative: neither — it is the premise typed into a table.
  downstream story energy: "her blessing doubles as his discharge papers" (:37) is one phrase worth keeping for Theo's arc; otherwise none.
```

```text
6. Claude Map 2 — Borrowed Scarves — DISTINCT (with a binding violation that must be cured by porting, not adopting)
  obvious version: dual POV split evenly; rupture after a quiet chapter; job declined at the climax under romantic pressure.
  competent-but-derivative version: a slow-burn front half with the love interest's POV used for yearning rather than information.
  what this book adds: four real devices. (1) Decline-before-confession: "she arrives having already declined the offer that morning, for herself; then the painting, then the plain confession" (:79) — the only mechanism in any artifact that makes the earned-stay test pass structurally rather than tonally. (2) Rupture detonated "the same night... riding the high of the fear assignment" (:51) — Turn 3 at maximum altitude. (3) "scarves returned by mail" (:75) — the found-family motif converted into countable debt. (4) POV rationing that makes the reader's access to Theo as asymmetric as June's information — form mirroring the premise's stated asymmetry (premise.md:47).
  deepens premise or decorative: deepens — each device executes a named premise/guide requirement rather than decorating it.
  downstream story energy: all four devices port into a compliant spine; as written the map is illegal (19/9 split, multiple June runs incl. four consecutive at :75–79, vs READING_GUIDE.md:9) and its admitted risk is real ("Theo arrives underbuilt at his own climax," :86).
```

```text
7. Claude Map 3 — Hanging the Show — DISTINCT (structure) with DEFAULT/banned components inside
  obvious version: linear chronology; the showcase reached once, at the end.
  competent-but-derivative version: a framed romance where the frame leaks the ending's ease and the flashbacks are a victory lap.
  what this book adds: the only re-architecture of time in the pool; the faced-to-the-wall canvas (:99, :126) is a genuinely new withholding object; "the book literally performs its own reread of Odile before the reveal names it" (:129) is the one map that converts the guide's reread test into structure rather than planted lines.
  deepens premise or decorative: the frame deepens the reread contract; but three components fail — present-tense interstitials violate the past-tense binding (READING_GUIDE.md:9); the discovery via overheard "tell your mother—" (:121) is an eavesdropped half-conversation (banned-adjacent, READING_GUIDE.md:63) and not "undeniable" (an elder telling Theo to greet his mother proves acquaintance, not kinship); the double-exposure kiss (F9/F10) is the both-POV-replay staple, which the map itself calls "dead weight unless" (:131). Its rule answer is incoherent (see element 12).
  downstream story energy: the faced-to-wall canvas ports cleanly to a linear showcase chapter; the frame itself does not survive the bindings.
```

```text
8. The cohort / partial-truth clocker — DERIVATIVE (the knowing friend who clocks the fake couple — fixture of every fake-dating book)
  obvious version: a perceptive classmate winks "you two aren't fooling anyone."
  competent-but-derivative version: she knows but kindly says nothing — which is the hybrid as written: "Ruth clocks by week 2 or 3 that June/Theo are hiding something... she protects rather than exposes" (hybrid:39).
  what this book adds: the misread is the claimed upgrade — "misreads the reason" (codex:91) — but no artifact specifies what she misreads it AS. An unspecified misread is the trope with a fig leaf, and the hybrid's own risk list knows it ("must not become a convenient wise-NPC device," :90). The in-world fix is sitting unused: Ruth knows Theo works the gallery (public fact); the natural misread is professional impropriety — staff dating into his boss's final class — adjacent to the real secret, so her warning about "asymmetrical lies" (codex:103) lands double on reread.
  deepens premise or decorative: as designed, decorative; with the misread specified and a cost attached to her silence (Sam disagreeing with staying out of it would do), it deepens the Sam/Ruth "category is our own business" theme — she protects privacy because she lives by it.
  downstream story energy: her ch-19 warning and a one-line showcase payoff, once specified; currently none that isn't generic.
```

```text
9. The out-of-town offer — DERIVATIVE in handling (imports the turn-down-the-job-for-love beat); distinct in specification
  obvious version: a dream job in a glamorous city as the third-act ultimatum, declined at the airport.
  competent-but-derivative version: a good-on-paper job she visits and finds hollow — which C ch 20 commits to ("discovers what the offer cannot supply," :159).
  what this book adds: the specification is real — Philadelphia, named friend Nia Torres, six-month paid studio-manager role, "good because it gives money, space, respect, and lower rent, not because it is glamorous" (hybrid:45). But no artifact notices the offer's actual teeth: it is a better-paid version of the trap June is already in. Studio manager/fabrication is art-adjacency — exactly the life the premise defines as her problem ("adjacent to art in every way except making it," premise.md:20). That reading lets her decline for self-owned reasons while the offer stays good: it pays her to keep being the person who handles other people's art.
  deepens premise or decorative: the specification deepens; the decline mechanics everywhere default ("declines/defer-modifies," codex:163; decline-after-confession in Map 1, C, and the hybrid).
  downstream story energy: decline-before-confession (Map 2's device) plus June recommending another artist to Nia — her owned care move is re-threading the overlooked (READING_GUIDE.md:50) — converts refusal into characterization instead of plot disposal.
```

```text
10. The Turn 3 discovery mechanism — DEFAULT by convergence
  obvious version: a captioned family photograph found in the archive — which is what five of six mechanisms are (codex:59, :120; hybrid:46; Map 1 :30; Map 2 :74). When every generator reaches for the same object, that object is the model default for "small, accidental, undeniable."
  competent-but-derivative version: the photo, surfacing at week 6 by authorial timing in an archive June has worked around for weeks — an archive Theo himself runs, meaning his letting her near it is either unexamined convenience or unwritten self-sabotage.
  what this book adds: nothing yet; the two non-photo variants fail individually — C's crate label "Theodore Brennan Marchetti family archive" (:171) proves employment, which June already knows, not kinship; Map 3's overheard fragment fails "undeniable" and brushes a banned device (READING_GUIDE.md:63).
  deepens premise or decorative: as pooled, decorative — discovery by archive entropy, caused by nothing.
  downstream story energy: the available transform creates it: Theo's own care move delivers the wound — he lends June old Marchetti catalogs for wall-label formatting (he "arrives with the thing you mentioned needing," READING_GUIDE.md:49); the acknowledgments page reads "my sister Eileen, my nephew Theo." Printed, public, kinship-explicit, handed to her by him: accidental, undeniable, and caused by character. His defining virtue becomes the instrument of the rupture — which is what "asymmetry, not the lie" (premise.md:58) needs.
```

```text
11. The joint piece concept — DISTINCT (C/hybrid version)
  obvious version: portraits of each other, or intertwined hands, or the gallery itself.
  competent-but-derivative version: B's "table set for people who are absent/present" (:121) — checked as the strongest counter-candidate and rejected: it is one step from repainting Winter Kitchen, and the guide caps that painting's invocations precisely to prevent thesis-by-pastiche.
  what this book adds: C's two-panel/one-canvas — "June paints a room as seen by someone leaving; Theo paints the same room as kept ready for return; final layer lets both versions remain visible" (:172) — encodes both arcs in one object, ties to Theo's owned underpainting motif (READING_GUIDE.md:39), and is technically true (pentimento, fat over lean) per the smallness test.
  deepens premise or decorative: deepens — it advances the Winter Kitchen thesis (domestic attention as love) without copying it, and it can carry the coda with no speech, which is guide question 5's exact demand.
  downstream story energy: the canvas sits unreconciled through the rupture and is reconciled on the page after the confession — a physical state later chapters read instead of narrating feelings.
```

```text
12. The couples-only rule history — DISTINCT (B/hybrid fork only); the Claude fork is incoherent and must be rejected
  obvious version: the rule just exists, unexamined — a contrivance the book hopes you don't poke.
  competent-but-derivative version: "she invented the rule for them" as a final-page aww — Maps 2 and 3's answer ("no couples-only rule before that night," :82; "a rule invented for them," :127).
  what this book adds: the predates-and-tightened answer (codex:122, hybrid:48) survives the logic the romantic answer breaks: Odile offered "the last spot," which requires a pre-existing roster of couples; a rule invented that night cannot have already filled seven slots with couples. B/hybrid also makes the rule a discoverable character fact — partner/pair/couple drift on old flyers and cards, plus Sam/Ruth as living precedent that Odile's "couple" always meant "two people who can be honest in front of each other."
  deepens premise or decorative: deepens — and one consequence is undersold everywhere: under the elastic definition, June and Theo were never actually in violation, which re-reads Odile's reveal as grace rather than gotcha.
  downstream story energy: the drift clue is plantable in the assignment cards (the guide's load-bearing epigraphs); Sam/Ruth's showcase arc ("present themselves without explaining the category," hybrid:39) pays the same theme.
```

```text
13. The private confession location — DEFAULT
  obvious version: a quiet two-shot with coffee — which is all any candidate offers, because every map merely shuffles the premise's own two-item menu (bench or booth, premise.md:60); the hybrid takes all three stations ("booth... walk... bench," :49), which is indecision presented as synthesis.
  competent-but-derivative version: the bench, snow threatening, coffee cooling.
  what this book adds: only B argues from theme ("the diner is the cohort commons and later becomes theirs privately," :123); no candidate designs a single behavioral beat for the scene.
  deepens premise or decorative: as pooled, decorative — location as backdrop.
  downstream story energy: available via transform: commit to the booth with B's commons-privatization logic, and suspend Theo's signature care move — the man who remembers every order after one exposure (READING_GUIDE.md:49) asks her what she wants. The move's absence is the legible signal he has arrived as himself, not as the useful one; no narration required.
```

```text
14. The showcase disclosure plan — DEFAULT and half-designed in every artifact
  obvious version: the couple announces the truth to the room; the room laughs; all is forgiven.
  competent-but-derivative version: exactly what the pool converges on — "the truth to the class, met warmly" (Map 1 :36), "met with laughter instead of judgment" (Map 2 :81), "learns enough to forgive" (codex:175). Frictionless group absolution; the warmth floor (READING_GUIDE.md:85) requires embarrassment to be survivable, not absent.
  what this book adds: nothing — no candidate designs HOW the class learns (a verbal announcement is a public confession by the side door, against the ending's whole stance), and every artifact skips the second half of guide question 8: whether the class learns the NEPHEW secret. Canon leaves it open ("until the showcase, if ever," premise.md:89); nobody decided it.
  deepens premise or decorative: as designed, decorative — a warmth-dispensing checkbox.
  downstream story energy: via transform: disclosure carried by artifact, not announcement — the joint piece's two visible underpaintings plus the wall label (labels are literally June's job) do the telling; Ruth's clocker thread pays off in one line; the class never learns the nephew relation (keeps the showcase about the work and protects Odile's "last class ending in grace" stake); Map 3's faced-to-wall canvas ports here as the showcase's one withheld object.
```

---

## Revision orders

1. **REJECT shape Codex-A and Claude Map 1.** They are the located default, independently produced twice. Retain only as the control documenting what the final skeleton must not be.
2. **TRANSFORM Working Hybrid (the synthesis is the failure point):** restore C's consecutive-June rupture corridor using the one sanctioned flex; collapse pre-class chapters 03–04 into one chapter; move the rupture's detonation to the night of week 6, riding the fear assignment (Map 2's placement) instead of a free-floating discovery chapter; move June's decline of Philadelphia **before** the confession, self-owned and unwitnessed by Theo (Map 2's device — the only structural pass of the earned-stay test in the pool).
3. **TRANSFORM Turn 3 discovery:** replace all photo/caption/label/eavesdrop variants with the catalog-acknowledgments page delivered by Theo's own care move (he lends her the catalogs for wall-label reference). Printed, kinship-explicit, handed over by him.
4. **TRANSFORM the offer:** articulate the same-trap reading (the job pays her to keep handling other people's art) as the self-owned decline reason; ban "defer-modifies"; add June recommending another artist to Nia as the decline's care-move form.
5. **TRANSFORM the clocker:** specify Ruth's misread as professional impropriety (gallery staffer dating into his boss's class) and attach a cost to her silence; otherwise cut the clocking entirely.
6. **ADOPT** C's two-panel joint piece; **REJECT** B's set-table version (Winter Kitchen pastiche) and A's empty interior.
7. **ADOPT** the predates-and-tightened rule history with the partner/pair/couple card-drift clue; **REJECT** Maps 2/3's "rule invented that night" (breaks "last spot" logic).
8. **TRANSFORM the confession:** commit to the diner booth on B's commons-privatization logic; build the scene on the suspension of Theo's order-remembering care move.
9. **TRANSFORM the showcase disclosure:** artifact-borne (underpaintings + wall label + Map 3's faced-to-wall canvas), no announcement scene; the class never learns the nephew relation; Ruth gets one line, not a speech.
10. **Port from Map 2 into the compliant spine:** "scarves returned by mail" as the rupture's found-family cost. Do not adopt Map 2 or Map 3 wholesale — both violate the POV/tense bindings; their value is as donor organs.

No RE-BRAINSTORM is required for the pool as a whole — the divergent parts exist. But if Codex regenerates candidates, force divergence on the axes its trio never touched: **time structure and information-release order**, since its three maps varied only emphasis while sharing one beat sequence.
