# Claude-Tic Audit: Chapter 03

Chapter: `output/chapters/chapter_03.md`
Mechanical gate: PASS, open=0, WATCH=52.

## Thirteen-Tic Sweep

1. CLEAR - em-dash crutch - checked dialogue and narration; nearest miss: line 79 `"It's — yes"` is Ben's interrupted self-correction and the only dialogue dash hit.
2. CLEAR - shimmer prose - nearest miss: line 11 "A cobalt era. A long teal period" is June's painterly perception of paint layers, not atmospheric drift.
3. CLEAR - mood verbs - checked for mattered/earned/weighed/carried; nearest miss: line 99 "It had weight" is literal gesture-drawing craft language.
4. FOUND/REPAIRED - default-elegant phrases - raw draft used portable flourish in cohort arrivals and theme lines; repaired at lines 31, 33, 47, 65, 89, 99, 105, 127, 161, 163. Round-2 Comedy Doctor verified clean.
5. CLEAR - softeners/qualifiers - nearest miss: line 87 "looked longer than she meant to" is focalizer hesitation tied to Luis's drawing.
6. CLEAR - narrator philosopher intrusion - nearest miss: line 109 "none of them was unkind" is scene-specific judgment after seven drawings, not detachable wisdom.
7. FOUND/REPAIRED - theme gloss after beat - raw Theo exit line stated "done being looked at"; repaired to practical route at line 157, leaving the interiority to June at line 159.
8. CLEAR - recursive negation - no not-X/not-Y pattern driving emphasis. Nearest miss: line 109 "not expected" is plain contrast.
9. CLEAR - self-aware meta-clause - no "if that was the word" construction.
10. CLEAR - over-balanced structures - nearest miss: line 107 roll-call list is intentionally structural for the drawing survey.
11. CLEAR - profundity-stamp ending - chapter ends on action: line 169 June settles the drawing and goes first.
12. CLEAR - lovely/quiet/small default register - strongest counter-candidate: line 43 "quietly" was cut from risk by Sam's concrete spatial action; no default lovely/small drift.
13. CLEAR - physical reaction defaults - no heartbeat/throat/breath defaults; embarrassment is rendered through marks, page scale, posture, and choices.

## Book-Specific Additions

- CLEAR - forbidden breath/air/smirk/chuckle/flutter patterns: protected-term scan returned no hits.
- CLEAR - `Winter Kitchen`: zero invocations.
- FOUND/REPAIRED - bureaucratic/fiscal narration hardening from Ch02: round-1 Comedy Doctor found 10 instances; after repair, round 2 verified zero narration instances.
- WATCH - Odile quotability: line 53, 61/65, 77, 81, 95, 111/115/117/119/121, 125. Round-2 Comedy Doctor passes at ceiling; tracker must cap the next Odile class chapter lower.

## WATCH Reconciliation

- repeated-descriptor 30: ensemble/name-heavy chapter; not a prose tic by itself.
- trailing participles 7: monitor, but current instances carry physical classroom action.
- hands/body 4 and eyes 2: mostly literal drawing/looking assignment, not romance-body default.
- uncontracted dialogue 4: Odile's formal precision, licensed by voice card.

Chapter verdict: TIC-CLEAN AFTER REPAIRS.
