Audit written to `output/critiques/claude/chapter_14.dialogue_doctor.md` (the manifest-expected coverage file). Full audit text:

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# Dialogue Doctor — Chapter 14 (`output/chapters/chapter_14.md`)

Manifest coverage: chapter 14, scene 01, lines 2–157 (52 dialogue lines, 69 quoted utterances) — single scene, audited in full. Sub-beats examined: group thread (ln 11–15), arrival/cuff (ln 17–45), card and size decision (ln 47–63), label problem and Odile's instruction (ln 65–83), stockroom return and catalog reading (ln 85–129), tote handoff and exit (ln 131–157). Calibration inputs applied: `chapter_14.claude_tic_audit.md`, `chapter_14.initial_draft_assessment.md`, reading guide §2 (plain-speech floor, zero-tolerance dialogue-diagnosis rule), `reading_guide_bans.tsv`.

## SCENE 01 / Marchetti Rooms, Thursday pickup (ln 2–157):

1. VOICE CONVERGENCE: CLEAN — covered attributions across the cuff exchange, the size decision, the catalog banter, and the handoff. June holds visual/value nouns under pressure ("It's a decent brown. Raw umber holds its value." ln 31); Theo holds process-and-logistics syntax ("Dab from the back of the fabric, don't scrub, it'll lift most of it." ln 25) and longer modal mass (the size opinion, ln 59). Strongest counter-candidate: "You're bagging them like produce." / "I'm bagging them like nine pounds of someone's career." (June, Theo, tote handoff, ln 139–141) — mirrored syntax, but each line stays in its owner's lexical field (her grocery-visual jab, his weight-and-custody answer), and the tic audit explicitly protected the catalog/bag comedy. The rhythmic interchangeability in the catalog-reading beat is real but is a punchline-distribution failure, ruled under FAKE-SHARP (a) below, not lexical convergence.

2. MONOTONE Q/A RHYTHM: CLEAN — checked every multi-turn run for same-length volley. Strongest counter-candidate: "Mara sent it." / "I saw." / "Priya's printing forty." / "Then it worked." / "It worked." (June, Theo, ln 35–43) — five clipped lines of near-identical weight. Survives under the ordinary-talk calibration (aftermath scenes may circle and produce flat functional lines): the turns differ in function (report, acknowledgment, report, assessment, charged echo), the echo "It worked." carries the kiss without debriefing it, and interiority brackets the run (ln 33, 43). The catalog Q/A ("Does she do this?" / "No… She loans nothing. There's a sign about it in her head." ln 97–99) breaks volley weight with an asymmetric answer.

3. MISSING INTERIORITY: CLEAN — checked each exchange for focalizer presence. Theo's mind runs through the cuff offer ("He noticed the cuff before the coffee." ln 17), the closed Tuesday subject ("the alternative conversation had no agenda, no end time, and no chairs." ln 33), the loan ("He told himself the showcase had made Odile generous, and knew it was the wrong explanation even as he filed it." ln 103), and the handoff (the suppressed flag-the-pages alternative, ln 131). Strongest counter-candidate for a dark patch: "Huh," June said (ln 101) — a loaded short line followed by silence; survives because the next paragraph registers exactly what the silence costs him and what filing the wrong explanation buys ("the wrong one let him keep working.").

4. QUESTIONS-AS-STATEMENTS: CLEAN — checked all questions. "Does she do this?" (ln 97), "This the famous one?" (ln 119), and "What happened to the rest of this?" (ln 49) are genuine information questions answered with facts. Strongest counter-candidate: Odile's "What do I write, you are about to ask." (ln 77) — a statement wearing a question's clothes; survives because she answers it in the same breath ("Fewer words than you are planning."), it manufactures pressure rather than portent, and her card licenses imperative economy and full forms when cutting precisely (Rule 4 deliberate-precision exemption).

5. FAKE-McCARTHY MINIMALISM: CLEAN — clipped runs are earned by the aftermath register and anchored by object work (jar, card, tote, plate lists); attribution beats persist throughout. Strongest counter-candidate: the six-turn unattributed card exchange (ln 49–57); survives because it is a strict two-hander pinned by "She set the card down." and the focalizer's commitment paragraph (ln 59) restores full syntax immediately after.

6. JARGON-TRADING WITHOUT TRANSLATION: CLEAN — world-terms arrive weighable: grounds come with dimensions and state ("a sixteen-by-twenty and a twelve-by-sixteen, both primed, both square" ln 9), back matter is glossed in narration ("where the labels lived in neat gray columns" ln 105), the catalogs are priced and placed ("Sold at the front desk for fifteen dollars… shelved in libraries." ln 91). Strongest counter-candidate: "The bad ones teach the fence line." (June, ln 129) — compressed, but parsable on contact (bad examples mark the boundary) and speakable in her craft register.

7. ATTRIBUTION OPACITY: CLEAN — never lost a speaker across the chapter. Strongest counter-candidate: "Labels are not apologies." (ln 71) — for one line the reader may assign it to Theo before "Odile had come in from the office end of the room" (ln 73) resolves it; survives because the misdirection is the entrance gag's mechanism, resolution arrives within one paragraph, and the line is voice-printed Odile.

FAKE-SHARP: FAIL (a) — workshopped-punchline volley — "*Untitled (Stove)*, oil on panel, 1994… She let someone get away with *Untitled*." / "Once a show, maybe. With the parenthesis as the toll." / "*Untitled (Stove)* is a title wearing a fake mustache." / "Take it up with 1994." (June and Theo alternating, catalog reading, ln 107–113) — four consecutive turns, four landed buttons, strict alternation: the cut-list's "dialogue where every speaker has the same dry correction rhythm," and Rule 7 (a conversation where every line lands perfectly is a written conversation). "With the parenthesis as the toll" is additionally quotable-not-speakable (cut-list) and sits in Theo's mouth against his card's never-says list ("polished aphorisms") and his modal spec (practical-to-emotional, longer mass than June's).

FAKE-SHARP: FAIL (b) — stacked logistics punchlines — "There were nine options. I edited." / "Nine." / "Some of them had footnotes." / "Show me the dead seven sometime." (Theo, June, card exchange, ln 51–57) — three consecutive workshopped buttons on one logistics object, in the first post-kiss conversation, where both speakers should be awkward (cut-list: zingers arriving when a character should be ashamed/ordinary/quiet; Rule 8: choose friction over the clean landing). The Claude-tic audit ordered synthesis to "avoid stacking extra logistics punchlines around card sizes" while keeping the catalog/bag comedy; this stack survived verbatim from the raw draft (raw ln 59–67), unexecuted and undefended.

FAKE-SHARP: FAIL (c) — aphorism callback button — "Six p.m. chairs or nine forty chairs?" / "Both. We'll choose the facts." (June, Theo, exit, ln 149–151) — "We'll choose the facts" re-serves Theo's own line (ln 127) as a couple-aphorism closing the scene on a composed couplet: cut-list "exchanges that exist mainly to deliver a compact aphorism." His card forbids polished aphorisms; under pressure he lists facts. The chapter's design needs the exit ordinary so the stockroom dread (ln 155) lands — the button pre-spends it.

INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION: CLEAN — tested Rule 9 in both directions. The focalizer's relationship to the information is rendered, not explained twice: the handoff paragraph (ln 143) gives weight transfer through hands, and the registration arrives later as failed inventory (ln 155) instead of a gloss. Strongest counter-candidate: the four-turn catalog volley (ln 107–113) runs without any interior line; survives because the flanking paragraphs (ln 105, 115) carry his lived relationship to the exchange (how she reads, what work he retreats to, the ground "waiting for a pencil line").

READING-GUIDE §2 (zero-tolerance dialogue diagnosis; calibration overrides generic defaults): FAIL — "He had the answer ready if she ever asked. He shelved for Odile sometimes. True sentence. Thin sentence." (Theo narration about his own prepared answer, stockroom, ln 85) — narration rating a sentence's quality is the banned move by name ("no calling a sentence careful, rehearsed, lawyerly…"); §6 makes any instance a defect "in any speaker's mouth or in narration about speech." This is a revision artifact: the raw draft's banned "Not the whole truth, but true" (raw ln 95) was replaced with a construction that trades a Not-X-but-Y hit for a zero-tolerance hit. Same family, sweep in the same order: "made it hard to file her sentence under critique" (ln 7), "heard the sound it would make in the room" (ln 9), "The sentence was assembled and ready." (ln 131).

## Declined flags (exclusions and calibration, named):
- Label-language analysis ("You can hear somebody deciding six p.m. mattered." ln 125; "I want to see twenty of them in a row so I can hear the difference." ln 69) — wall labels are the scene's literal craft subject; the zero-tolerance rule bans captioning one another's conversational language, not discussing written wall text as work product.
- Group thread (ln 11) — the reading guide declares no chat-format exclusions, so judged under Rule 7 with text-register allowance: Ben's "What weight cardstock. Don't say 'normal.'" is the beat's single joke and within his card's capped contingency humor; Mara's and Priya's texts are functional.
- "You're bagging them like produce." / "I'm bagging them like nine pounds of someone's career." (ln 139–141) — protected by calibration ("keep the catalog/bag comedy"); one mirrored exchange at the handoff, each line in its owner's field.
- Odile's uncontracted forms ("Labels are not apologies."; "What do I write, you are about to ask.") — Rule 4 deliberate-precision exemption, licensed by her card ("full forms when cutting precisely"); she is also the only character licensed for high-density memorable lines, and her visit (ln 71–83) stays inside two short speeches plus an instruction.

## Chapter-specific checks (per packet contract):
- No debrief, declaration, or reveal: HOLDS — the kiss is handled entirely through the jar/cuff offer and "He let that be the whole conversation about Tuesday" (ln 33); the thread treats the photo as print logistics ("80lb matte"); no "what are we," no confession, no nephew or acknowledgment leakage (closest pressure: "every November he had spent carrying boxes for her," ln 89 — hides rather than reveals).
- Theo defaults to practical offers and safe facts: HOLDS outside the three FAKE-SHARP slots (jar instructions ln 25, label rules ln 67, tote and slip protection ln 135).
- June stays precise, dry, visually/craft oriented: HOLDS ("Raw umber holds its value." ln 31; plate-list reading ln 105–129).
- Odile's instruction is logistics with hidden pressure, not oracle: HOLDS — "Stockroom. Third shelf, left side. The gray spines. Bring them out." / "All of them." (ln 77–81); she exits with the box, "and that was the entire visit."
- Focalizer registers the loan's danger without exposing it: HOLDS — wrong-explanation filing (ln 103), the suppressed photograph-the-pages alternative (ln 131), failed inventory and the blank *returned* column (ln 155–157).

## REVISION ORDERS:
1. (FAKE-SHARP a, ln 107–113) Quoted volley above. Keep June's two lines — dry correction is her card. Replace both of Theo's caps with archive-fact answers in his own modal mass: he runs the records, so he answers with what actually happened (how often Odile permitted *Untitled*, that she made the artist add the parenthesis), at least one answer allowed to be flat or incomplete. Cut "With the parenthesis as the toll." outright; no replacement epigram. The beat's comedy should come from June's reading against his plain knowledge, not from matched zingers.
2. (FAKE-SHARP b, ln 51–57) Quoted stack above. Keep the torn-card object and at most one button — either "Some of them had footnotes." or "Show me the dead seven sometime.", not both. Theo's remaining answers go plain per his card ("There were nine. I cut it down." register), and the first post-kiss awkwardness shows as friction — an over-explanation he has to stop mid-sentence (his guilt tell), not a finished bit. This also executes the standing tic-audit order against stacked card-size punchlines.
3. (FAKE-SHARP c, ln 149–151) June's chairs question may stand — it carries the unsolved joint subject in her register. Replace "Both. We'll choose the facts." with a practical commitment that leaves the question open: he'll count both, or asks which she needs, or admits he doesn't know yet. No callback to "choose the facts" — the phrase did its work at ln 125–127 — so the exit stays ordinary and the stockroom failed-inventory close (ln 155) lands unspent.
4. (READING-GUIDE §2, ln 85) Delete "True sentence. Thin sentence." Show the answer's inadequacy through what it leaves out, in objects already on the page (the hand that finds the shelf like his own light switches, the fifteen Novembers of boxes), without naming the relation. Sweep the family in the same pass: ln 7 — drop "file her sentence under critique"; render the change as what he can no longer do with the compliment, not as a category applied to her sentence; ln 9 — cut "heard the sound it would make in the room"; "read it back to himself… and torn it in half" already carries the beat; ln 131 — replace "The sentence was assembled and ready." with action (he had the offer in his mouth and went for the bag instead) — no sentence-as-object framing.

Per audit contract, findings are BLOCKING and resolve via opposing-model rewrite (route orders to the Codex lane); self-repair by the drafting model is not an accepted resolution.

OVERALL: BLOCKING (4 findings)
