# Chapter 13 Synthesis Memo

## Provenance

- Claude draft: `output/drafts/claude/chapter_13.round_01.md`
- Codex counter-draft: `output/drafts/codex/chapter_13.md`
- Integrated chapter: `output/chapters/chapter_13.md`
- Drafting lane: dual-draft, with Claude prose as base and Codex counter-draft used for pressure testing and selective structural alternatives.
- Chapter packet: `output/model_prompts/claude/chapter_draft/chapter_13.md`

## What Stayed From Claude

- June POV Week 5 class engine: back-to-back easels, entrusted memory cards, and painting the other person's memory without rescue.
- Concrete painting details for both memories: Theo's airshaft/Key Food/clothespin material and June's erased-wall/orange/Decorator's White material.
- Odile's compact assignment and showcase announcement as the public pressure mechanism.
- Mara's flyer-photo setup, the failed professional-looking first photo, the public kiss, and the awkward practical aftermath around Theo's brush and June's cuff.
- The final Nia text as a private offer-pressure turn after the kiss.

## What Codex Changed

- Repaired raw continuity errors around Nia's surname, the chicken-thigh price, the rubber-band card location, and Theo's erased-wall painting details.
- Rebuilt Theo's painting of June's memory so it includes the outlet plate, two screws, formula tape, and slop sink, and avoids painting June as a noble figure.
- Removed legal/clerical figures and narrator wit that drifted out of the chapter's warm, precise comedy register.
- Recast dialogue after Dialogue Doctor pressure: Mara's scarf exchange, Theo's screw/plate line, the `No title` beat, the sidewalk size-option close, and all zero-tolerance dialogue-diagnosis captions.
- Repaired Comedy Doctor orders: cut the portable opening aphorism, removed `administrative weather`, removed the invoice simile, recast the `leave it alone` and `absurdly Theo` explanatory captions, and flattened one Odile aphorism.
- Repaired Figuration Audit round-1 orders: cut `The room made every partner a wall` and replaced `The word showcase landed...` with the literal packet-to-room sequence beginning `Until tonight`.
- Repaired Positive Prose and Plain Translation blockers after reset: cut the dear/bleak essay frame, word/room impact captions, generic cover-kiss commentary, polished photo-pressure lines, the `subject that can hold both of us` family, and post-kiss tact captions; restored the hinge through concrete photo/studio/kiss mechanics (flyer crop, shoulder seam, one-count duration breach, dropped brush, umber cuff, top-rack interception).

## Codex Counter-Draft Use

- The Codex draft was not used as prose base. Claude's draft had stronger physical staging and more specific paint handling.
- Codex's counter-draft mainly supplied editorial tests: where the kiss should sit relative to the failed photo, how little the Nia text should be explained, and how the `After Class` subject should remain pre-rupture infrastructure rather than a romantic thesis.
- Claude's Codex-tic audit (`output/critiques/claude/chapter_13.codex_tic_audit.md`) found Codex draft defaults around arrangement, label-like explanation, and too-clean thematic closers; the integrated chapter avoids those as governing texture.

## Audit Disposition To Date

- Claude-tic audit: Codex performed and repaired Claude defaults before integration, including em-dash/atmosphere/qualifier drift, legal figures, and wisdom-caption risk.
- Codex core/risk audits: drafted at `output/critiques/codex/chapter_13.*.md`; no unresolved Codex-owned blocker remains after current repairs.
- Dialogue Doctor: round 1 found blockers; Codex repaired all five orders. A current-text rerun after the Positive Prose repairs returned `OVERALL: CLEAN` in round 3 and is promoted canonical.
- Comedy Doctor: round 1 found five blocking orders; Codex repaired all. A current-text rerun after the Positive Prose repairs returned `CLEAR` in round 3 and is promoted canonical.
- Figuration Audit: round 1 found two blocking unearned images. Codex repaired both; round 2 returned `UNEARNED-CLEAR` and is promoted canonical.
- Positive Prose: six rounds. Codex accepted line-family orders around portable midpoint prose, summarized pressure, polished dialogue, and generic figuration; round 6 returned `INHABITED` and is promoted canonical.
- Narrator-Publicist: returned `CRITICAL-DISTANCE-HELD` with no revision orders.
- Plain Translation: returned `REGISTER-HOLDS` with no revision orders.

## Current Verification State

- Final per-chapter gate: `bash scripts/quality_gate.sh output/chapters/chapter_13.md` PASS, open=0, allowlisted=0, WATCH=76.
- Final full gate after Chapter 13 repairs: `bash scripts/quality_gate.sh` PASS, open=0, allowlisted=0, WATCH=818 across Chapters 01-13.
- Dialogue scene manifest: `bash scripts/dialogue_scene_manifest.sh` OK, missing_doctor_files=0.
- Current Chapter 13 word count: 2,690.
- Current prose total across Chapters 01-13: 33,013.
- Claude limit event preserved for provenance: figuration verification attempt exited rc=1 at 2026-06-11T15:28:13Z with five-hour session limit; reset shown as 1:00 PM America/New_York. Post-reset rerun succeeded.
- Chapter 13 is committable after status/worklog/tracker reconciliation.

## Forward Instructions

- Ch14 must inherit the kiss as awkward fact, not confession or instant coupledom.
- Ch14 should use Thursday pickup/panel-size logistics and likely catalog lending without overusing logistics comedy.
- Ch15 must formalize the Philadelphia offer deadline and test the job's real attractiveness without giving Theo deciding authority.
- Ch16 must carry the kiss, the offer secret, and the `After Class` subject into the fear assignment without resolving nephew identity, Odile's knowledge, Priya/Ben's outcome, or June's stay/leave decision.
- Avoid Ch13 spent families: logistics-as-default comedy, evaluative `, which` captions, word-as-object impact, wall/room maxims or personification, Odile aphorism clusters, `make it larger` / negated-frame families, repeated room-light imagery, and Theo-restraint-by-negation.
