SCENE 01 (chapter 08, lines 2–117: studio cleanup → Sonia's back booth → Marchetti stockroom — manifest scene 01, the only required scene):

- **1. VOICE CONVERGENCE — FAIL** — "'So between us we have one painting on display and one in witness protection.' / 'That's the distribution, yes.'" (June, Theo, booth bench). June's line is hers; Theo's reply is not his. His voice card specifies that under pressure he "lists facts, tries to solve logistics, then strips down to apology," and over-explains when guilty — it never licenses clipped ironic ratification. "That's the distribution, yes" adopts June's mock-officialese register wholesale at the exact moment Theo is sitting on a concealed unauthorized portrait of the person asking. Cover the attributions and the line reads as June answering herself. This also trips the cut-list bullet "zingers that arrive at the moment a character should be confused, tired, afraid, ashamed, ordinary, or quiet" — Theo is ashamed here, and the chapter knows it ("He had been waiting for the question since the studio and it still arrived before he was ready"), then hands him a poised epigram anyway.

- **2. MONOTONE Q/A RHYTHM — CLEAN** — checked the June probe sequence and the Mara ratification round. Strongest counter-candidate: "'So it lives with you now.' / 'It lives in a folder.'" — the echoed verb is composed, but the exchange is statement-probe answered by visible deflection, lengths vary (June one clause, Theo's final answer three sentences of unequal weight), and the sequence ends asymmetrically with "Was it that bad?" getting a real answer. Not a volley of matched weights. The followability test passes: a cold reader can state what June asked (where is your panel, was it bad), what Theo refused (the full truth), and what he conceded ("One part did").

- **3. MISSING INTERIORITY — CLEAN** — Theo's mind never goes dark in either exchange. Strongest counter-candidate: the Odile studio exchange (lines 19–27), where his spoken contribution collapses to "'I was clearing the table'" — but the interiority around it ("He had four versions of the sentence ready and none of them survived contact"; the noted-filed-declined-to-examine beat) keeps the focalizer's lived relationship to the errand fully present. At the booth, the napkin-pleat reading ("Theo understood that the hesitation had happened anyway, somewhere he could not see, and had been overruled") is rule-9 interiority working correctly: reacting to what was heard, not captioning it.

- **4. QUESTIONS-AS-STATEMENTS — CLEAN** — checked every interrogative. Strongest counter-candidate: June's "So it lives with you now." — a position delivered declaratively, but it manufactures no portent: it is a literal logistics inference from "anything not racked goes home," and Theo answers it as logistics. "Was it that bad?" is a genuine question genuinely answered. No noun-question/portentous-answer pattern anywhere in the chapter.

- **5. FAKE-McCARTHY MINIMALISM — CLEAN** — the one stripped exchange is Odile's ("'Sonia is expecting her envelope. You're going anyway.' … 'That comes down too. Lights.'"). Strongest counter-candidate: "Lights." as a one-word closer — it survives because Odile's card licenses exactly this ("Again," "No," "Eat" can carry scene work; under pressure, fewer words, more imperatives) and the surrounding narration is full, not starved. Attribution never drops out to perform starkness.

- **6. JARGON-TRADING — CLEAN** — checked craft vocabulary in dialogue. Strongest counter-candidate: Luis's "Radiator's behind that panel. Lay it on the seat." — self-translating; the reader is given the material fact and its consequence in the same breath. Acrylic-gouache, glassine, and flat files all live in narration where Theo's POV weighs them for the reader. Nothing is traded untranslated between speakers.

- **7. ATTRIBUTION OPACITY — CLEAN** — read the rapid run at lines 51–61 with attributions covered. Strongest counter-candidate: "'That's why,' Priya said." — the riskiest line because it answers Ben across Mara's announcement, and it carries an explicit tag plus a grounding action (moving the fries toward Luis). Every line in the fast run is tagged or anchored to business; Sonia's daughter, Sonia, and Luis are all named at their single lines. The reader never loses the speaker.

- **FAKE-SHARP — FAIL** — the keeping-Tuesdays run: "'I've decided, and I'm informing you rather than consulting you, because consulting goes badly with this group.' / 'I'd have made a slide deck.' / 'That's why.' / … / 'I wasn't going to discuss the spreadsheet. I was going to allude to it with dignity.'" (Mara, Ben, Priya, booth). Four consecutive landing lines with no functional grain between them — Rule 7 ("A conversation where every line lands perfectly is a written conversation, not a spoken one") and the cut-list bullet "dialogue where every speaker has the same dry correction rhythm." Mara's line is a workshopped antithesis (informing/consulting) with a turned clausal punchline; her card explicitly allows "ordinary hosting lines" and warns against "making every line a social punchline." Ben's "allude to it with dignity" is a polished epigram; his card's never-says list is "polished zingers detached from stakes," and his licensed register is nervous over-wordiness, not turned wit. The style bible's floor — "In ordinary scenes, at least half of dialogue should be functional, incomplete, or unquotable" — is not met inside this run; only "The class is on Tuesdays" and "We're also not discussing the spreadsheet tonight. We agreed." are unquotable speech. I applied the ordinary-talk calibration before flagging: this is a meal scene allowed to circle and stall — and that is precisely what it is not doing; it is sprinting punchline to punchline. Tested and declined to flag: Luis's "People come back to warm rooms" — compact, but it is literalized by the radiator established four exchanges earlier and matches his card's delayed-punchline license; it survives as the scene's one earned landing. Also tested June's "witness protection" line per the chapter risk sheet: "Mine lives in public with your name on it. Spelled right, which I want noted. So between us we have one painting on display and one in witness protection." It survives — narrowly — because it is speakable (one breath, spoken-word grain in "which I want noted"), it is an honest warning dressed as a joke (her card's named care move), and it is continuous with her established mock-bureaucratic register this scene ("alleged cherry," "crust program," "I rank everything"). The failure on that exchange belongs to Theo's reply (see mode 1), not her line. No replacement ordered for June.

- **INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION — FAIL (in the over-explaining direction of Rule 9)** — the chapter explains the table's emotional ledger twice. First pass, line 49: "That was the evening, arriving early: these people had learned June. They had her coffee and her pickle policy on file. Three Tuesdays and a gallery walk, and the cohort had quietly opened accounts in both their names." Second pass, line 77: "Mara was planning Tuesdays into December… Priya had defended a booth for six. Sonia's daughter had memorized a pickle preference. Every ordinary kindness at this table added itself to the hidden panel on the bench." The second paragraph re-lists evidence the scene already dramatized (the booth defense at line 35, the pickle at line 45) and that the first gloss already totaled. The prompt's rule-9 test — "is interiority reacting to the exchange rather than explaining it twice?" — fails on the literal criterion, and the chapter card names this exact risk: "reader-load risk: do not over-explain debt." The Claude-tic audit ordered density reduced; the final text still runs the ledger twice before the bin/hygiene recognition. The recognition itself ("The bin was not honesty. The bin was just a second concealment with better hygiene.") is the chapter's hinge and stays.

- **BOOK-SPECIFIC (dialogue-diagnosis ban, zero tolerance) — FAIL, two instances** —
  (a) "'It was the way you said it,' Mara said" (Mara to Priya, line 37). This rates Priya's delivery — exactly the move the reading guide bans: "Characters never comment on, characterize, or rate one another's language, phrasing, rhythm, or delivery… Not once per chapter; not at all… any instance is a defect, in any speaker's mouth." The codex tic audit cleared this line as "in-character praise"; that clearance is wrong under the rule's own wording, which provides no in-character exemption — perceptiveness must be shown "by what a character does with what they heard, never by captioning the conversation."
  (b) "'Huh,' June said. She ate a fry. 'That's more than I expected to get.'" (June to Theo, line 97). The fry and the turn back to the table are the correct, banned-rule-compliant receipt; the spoken line then captions his answer anyway — rating its disclosure level against her expectation, i.e., its carefulness, rather than doing anything with its content. Counter-candidates checked and surviving: "She said it at conversational volume, between fries" (literal acoustic staging, like "whispered," not a style rating); "He had four versions of the sentence ready and none of them survived contact" and "true in the aggregate and false where it counted" (Theo assessing the truth-content of his own undelivered drafts — honesty math, not delivery captioning); "issued the relevant material fact" (describes what Luis's line was about, not how it was said).

REVISION ORDERS:

1. **Cut "'It was the way you said it,' Mara said"** (line 37) — dialogue-diagnosis ban, zero tolerance. Replace with Mara doing something with the win instead of rating the delivery: per her card (narrates the room kindly, parenthetical warmth, social memory), have her extend the booth-defense story with one concrete detail about the strangers or fold the praise into the seat-handover business she already performs ("lifted a folded jacket… with the satisfaction of a maitre d'"). No replacement line may reference how Priya said anything.

2. **Cut "That's more than I expected to get"** (June, line 97) — dialogue-diagnosis ban. "Huh," the fry, and her turn back into the table's traffic already carry the receipt; end her response there, or — if a line is wanted — give her one that is content-bearing or self-aimed per her card (precise unsentimental engagement with "one part did," or a deflecting joke at her own expense), never a measurement of his answer's forthcomingness.

3. **Rewrite "That's the distribution, yes"** (Theo, line 91) — voice convergence plus zinger-while-ashamed. Per Theo's card, his register under guilt is practical-then-plain, with a tendency to qualify or over-explain: replace the dry ratification with a Theo-true beat — a logistics deflection that runs slightly too long, or a flat factual concession — so June keeps sole ownership of the wit and his discomfort is audible in the syntax. His honest follow-up ("Parts of it didn't work. One part did. I'm not done deciding what that means.") stays; the rewrite must land him there from a less composed starting point.

4. **Flatten the keeping-Tuesdays volley** (lines 51–61) — fake-sharp density, Rule 7/8. Two specific targets: (a) Mara's "I've decided, and I'm informing you rather than consulting you, because consulting goes badly with this group" loses the turned antithesis — her card licenses plain hosting speech; let the announcement be warm, declarative, and slightly over-explained rather than epigrammatic. (b) Ben's "I was going to allude to it with dignity" loses the polished construction — his card bans polished zingers and licenses nervous over-wordiness; rough it into something he reaches for and doesn't quite land, or into route/calendar vocabulary. Keep at most one landing line in the run (Ben's "I'd have made a slide deck" / Priya's "That's why" pairing is the best candidate to survive). At least half the run must end up functional or unquotable per the style bible floor. Do not touch Luis's "People come back to warm rooms" or Ben's exit line "We can stay later next week. I'm practicing." — both are card-licensed.

5. **Consolidate the debt ledger to a single pass** (lines 49 and 77) — Rule 9, over-explaining direction; chapter card: "do not over-explain debt." Either cut the line-49 gloss down to the observed fact (the pickle, the coffee) and let line 77 do the totaling, or keep line 49's "opened accounts" beat and strip line 77's evidence recap (booth-for-six, pickle preference) so it moves directly from Mara's December planning to the bin recognition. The recognition sentences ("You could not make a lie smaller by doing one more thing in secret. The bin was not honesty. The bin was just a second concealment with better hygiene.") are the chapter's hinge and must survive intact, surrounded by table action rather than a second accounting.

OVERALL: BLOCKING (5 findings)
