# Required Checks - Final Assembly Candidate

date: 2026-07-05
target: `output/drafts/checkpoints/final_candidate_after_numeric_date_20260705.md`
protocol: `../checks/protocols/required_checks.md`

## Verdict

PASS, with one recorded residual risk: the manuscript is 62,312 chapter-source words against the reading-guide/premise 75K-88K band. The final-candidate cold reads treat this as a market-positioning/expectation exception rather than an unresolved craft promise, but the final report must state it plainly.

## 1. Register Fit

PASS. The manuscript remains in the reading guide's grounded, materially specific, wry contemporary register. Counter-candidate checked: Ch24's "nine-hundred-eighty-by-Thursday problem" could have read like an editor patch, but it fits the chapter's adjacent "February problem" / "Kessler-in-March problem" cost rhythm and was independently verified clean by Claude.

## 2. Concrete-Anchor Audit

PASS. The book's major abstract pressures are tied to objects or procedures:

- leave/stay: boxes, lease notice, Dana key, Kessler W-9, `FEB = coat`
- fake couple: PARK/BRENNAN packet, assignment cards, `After Class`
- consent: faced-to-wall portrait, June turning it by hand
- Odile's manipulation: September 24 after-hours sheet and torn proof page
- cohort care: scarf, blue dish, catalog route, frame pickup forms

Nearest risk checked: Ch18 rupture montage. Batch 5 tightened it around scarf/catalog/Tasker/studies; no abstract rupture summary remains unsupported by object action.

## 3. Fact Discipline

PASS after final-candidate repair. Three fragile fact clusters were rechecked:

1. Dana/Ridgewood payment: $490/month, first month plus deposit = $980 due Dec 10; Ch23/Ch24 old $800 residues repaired.
2. Lease timing: lease ends mid-December; Ch20 January 31 exit is now under month-to-month terms after the December lease end rolled.
3. Suffolk rent: Ch06 now says "twenty-three-ten," matching Ch11's $2,310.

No `[verify ...]` placeholder appears in committed chapters.

## 4. Source-Fit Check

PASS. The book is fictional and does not rely on external quotes or public metrics in prose. Real-world-ish art-handling, rent, and calendar facts are internally fictionalized and tracked in `canon_sheet.md` / `continuity.md`. Open research placeholders remain planning-only and do not survive into chapter prose.

## 5. Regularity and Sentence-Continuity Tripwire

PASS. The most repeated visible pattern remains object-list/cost-list pressure. It is genre/voice-relevant but was reduced in Phase 8:

- Batch 4 compressed repeated Tasker columns.
- Batch 5 cut generic significance/square/straight residues.
- Final prose variability audit passes with sentence_cv=0.132, paragraph_cv=0.213, dialogue_sd=0.108, interiority_cv=0.460.

Nearest risk checked: Ch24 final cost list. It functions as material pressure, not a generic triadic profundity stamp.

## 6. Repeated-Frame Check

PASS. Recurring frames are motifs with changed function:

- jars: from practical studio care to two-filled-jars absence to final dirty rinse-water autonomy
- cards/forms: from class control to consent, checkout, proof, and route boundaries
- rooms/walls: from inaccessible art/lease pressure to `After Class` and Ridgewood wall
- carrying/maintenance: from Theo's usefulness wound to restraint

Overused jar-care repetition was repaired in Batch 5 by replacing the Ch10 duplicate jar exchange with the bad-stool care beat.

## 7. Stance and Voice

PASS. Narrative stance: close material attention, comedy under pressure, no therapeutic diagnosis. June and Theo remain distinguishable by default operations: June thinks through objects, money, and refusal; Theo thinks through route, handling, and repair impulse. Cohort voices hold their established functions without taking over the ending.

## 8. Developed Thought

PASS. The manuscript does not run in a perfectly straight thesis line. Examples of doubled-back thought/action:

- Ch06 Ruth's suspicion turns from romance to access terms.
- Ch13 cover kiss is both real and cover, with June refusing a simple category.
- Ch20 Tasker is good and still wrong for June.
- Ch24 Odile's setup worked and was still not hers to run.

## 9. Shape and Spine

PASS. Organizing principle in five words: **false category becomes chosen terms**.

Controlling claim: public labels, institutional paperwork, and practical care can create real intimacy only when the people inside them regain consent over what the category means.

The reverse outline remains causal rather than `and then`: Ch01 institutionalizes the mistake, midbook public/private art makes it costly, Ch17 ruptures it with the nephew fact, Ch20 settles the city choice before confession, Ch22 sets private terms, and Ch24 lets the artifact carry partial public truth.

## 10. Over-Correction

PASS. No fake-human typos, random slang, forced fragments, or artificially messy prose were introduced. Phase 8 repairs cut over-polished significance and repeated scaffolds rather than adding noise.

## Required Final-Report Note

The final report must not hide the length exception. The manuscript is below the 75K-88K band; the defense is that repeated adversarial reads after Phase 8 found no high-leverage expansion stronger than the risk of padding/reopening the compressed 24-chapter form.
