# Synthesis Memo - Chapter 18

## Provenance

- Chapter card: `output/outline/chapter_cards.md` / `CHAPTER CARD - 18: Returned Scarf`
- Claude raw draft: `output/drafts/claude/chapter_18.round_01.md`
- Accepted chapter: `output/chapters/chapter_18.md`
- Revision snapshots: `output/revision_snapshots/chapter_18/` through `chapter_18.0036.20260703T193816Z.after_final_gate.md`

## Base Decision

Accepted Claude round 01 as the prose base because it obeyed the rupture flex: June's absence was active labor, Mara's scarf returned through social care rather than threshold evidence, Tasker stayed unresolved, the eight catalogs remained present but secondary, and Theo did not receive a repair scene.

## What Was Kept

- The domestic opening: wool-soap scarf washing, half-packed apartment, and eight-catalog box.
- Theo's minimal text, `Okay. No chair.`
- The five leaving-side studies as the chapter's real engine for `After Class`.
- The Tasker floor-plan draft and Asha/Kessler/Dana counterpressure.
- Mara's sidewalk care: scarf accepted, food handed over, Tuesday seat offered without interrogation.
- The final nail-hole action, stripped of symbolic explanation.

## What Changed

- Raw mechanical blockers were repaired before acceptance: comma-then sequential actions, a participle CAP failure, `let herself`, and echo-line poetics.
- Claude-tic repairs cut narrator philosophy, theme-explanation, balanced rupture syllogisms, repeated `whole` buttons, object-as-agent drift, and excess em-dash rhythm.
- Dialogue Doctor repairs clarified Mara as the actor after June's `And dried flat` line and later clarified `June said` / `the double-parked Corolla` after Plain Translation flagged pronoun/article drift.
- Comedy Doctor rounds removed portable wit and stale gag families: Dana-translation gloss, Asha recruiter zinger, evidence simile, filing/ledger captions, hostage-exchange punchline, `working girl`, measured-duration scarf logic, and return/debt tallying.
- Positive Prose removed the clean autonomy syllogism around Tasker, the symbolic nail-hole because-clause, summary-pressure captions, and over-polished study/painting interpretations.
- Characters-Wrong and Thought Development repairs kept June less competent in self-diagnosis and made Mara's smoothing misfire by not asking the forbidden question.

## Audit Disposition

- Codex core/risk audits: no open orders after repair (`consequence_test`, `opening_hook`, `ending_quality`, `surprise_audit`, `unresolved_threads`, `continuity_check`, `voice_cover_names`, `editor_scored_check`, `shared_vocab`, and triggered Ch18 risk audits).
- Claude risk audits acted on: Dialogue Doctor, Comedy Doctor, Thought Development, Characters-Wrong, Positive Prose, Narrator-Publicist, and Plain Translation.
- Latest closing states: Dialogue Doctor final attribution order verified; Comedy post-positive verification `CURRENT-COMEDY-HOLDS`; Thought/Characters/Positive orders verified; Narrator-Publicist `CRITICAL-DISTANCE-HELD`; Plain Translation `REGISTER-HOLDS` with two clarity orders executed.
- Mechanical final: per-chapter gate PASS open=0 allowlisted=0 WATCH=29; full manuscript gate PASS open=0 allowlisted=0 WATCH=1080; dialogue-scene manifest OK; prose variability audit PASS.

## Forward Obligations

- Ch19: make the empty Week 7 chair public before facts are explained.
- Keep Tasker/Dec 4 and Asha referral unresolved until the self-owned Ch22 decision.
- Return the eight catalogs by a route that is not Theo; Ch18 currently plans a Tuesday 9 a.m. post office trip.
- The blue dish is now a practical Mara tether and must not become another severance-object repeat.
- `After Class` now has June's leaving-side studies face down; Theo must begin from the empty side, not from a solution.
