# Claude-Tic Audit - Chapter 24 Current Integrated Text

Target: `output/chapters/chapter_24.md`

Claude base: `output/drafts/claude/chapter_24.round_01.md`

Current mechanical input: `output/critiques/codex/mechanical/chapter_24_post_clarity_current_round3_repair_quality_gate_report.md` reports PASS, open=0, allowlisted=0, WATCH=103.

## Verdict

TIC-CLEAN after executed repairs. Raw/integrated blockers and later regression findings are preserved in the round audit files and repair snapshots. This file audits the current text through snapshot `chapter_24.0066...after_clarity_current_round3_repairs.md`.

## Per-Tic Findings

- CLEAR - tic 1 em-dash rhythm. Nearest miss: Theo's interrupted line at line 165, `"I'm going to walk you to the--"`. This is character self-correction, not narrator rhythm.
- CLEAR - tic 2 shimmer prose. Nearest miss: line 157, `"the fat slow kind that can't yet decide if it means it"`. Current Purple Prose and Clarity passes retain it as first-snow physical weather bracketed by `"It won't stick"` and streetlight/glare optics.
- CLEAR - tic 3 recurring mood verbs. Checked `mattered`, `earned`, `weighed`, `carried`, `held`. Surviving `carrying` language is literal object logistics: the rinse-water jar, Theo's `"I'm not carrying anything"`, and June's portfolio.
- CLEAR - tic 4 elegant default nouns. Checked `a kind of`, `something like`, `small`, `quiet`, `careful`. Nearest miss: line 11, `"Luis's three small studies"`; this names physical scale.
- CLEAR - tic 5 habitual qualifiers. Nearest misses: line 5, `"finally stopped performing the climb"`, and line 163, `"finally shown up to match the calendar"`; both are temporal/calendar uses, not emotional softeners.
- CLEAR - tic 6 narrator-as-philosopher. Old thesis lines (`room can hold it`, `Everything in between belonged...`) are absent. Nearest current miss: line 57, `"That was the only confession the room was going to get: two words at an urn"`; it fixes the public/private disclosure boundary and is backed by the dialogue at lines 51-55.
- CLEAR - tic 7 theme-explanation after beat. Old portrait thesis lines (`The painting didn't fix that...`) are absent. Nearest current miss: line 107, `"the seeing was what was hers to do with it"`; it clarifies the turn-back as consent/ownership rather than rejection and is necessary clarity per the Clarity Pass.
- CLEAR - tic 8 recursive negation. Nearest miss: line 19, `"not blended, not bridged"`; this is a visual description of the seam, not a false-profound ladder.
- CLEAR - tic 9 self-aware meta-clause. No `if that was the word`, `if there was a word`, or cousin self-captioning remains.
- CLEAR - tic 10 over-balanced sentence structures. Nearest miss: line 163, `"a February problem, a Kessler-in-March problem, an eight-hundred-dollars-by-Thursday problem"`; this is June's material cost stack, not smoothing symmetry.
- CLEAR - tic 11 profundity-stamp scene endings. Final phrase line 175, `"and she went"`, is embedded in the concrete cost sentence and not isolated as an oracle.
- CLEAR - tic 12 lovely/quiet/small register drift. The ending preserves cold, debt, public/private limits, and Odile's refusal to apologize; no soft-focus cover replaces consequence.
- CLEAR - tic 13 physical reaction default. No heartbeat/throat/flush shortcut. Physical beats are object actions: hand on stretcher, page torn, portfolio strap dropped.

## Book-Specific Additions

- CLEAR - no dialogue diagnosis. Current Dialogue Doctor returned CLEAN. Former line-quality captions were removed; current dialogue is judged through action, not delivery ratings.
- CLEAR - no weather-as-feeling motif inflation. First snow remains literal: line 159 says it will not stick, line 161 turns on glare/dark optics, and line 163 lands as cold on sweater and jar.
- CLEAR - no public confession / no nephew reveal. Ruth receives only the artifact-borne partial truth; Odile still cuts off `"He's my--"` before naming Theo.
- CLEAR - no `whole` / `which` caption accretion. Current targeted grep does not show the repaired explanatory `whole`/`which` families.
- CLEAR - no banned reading-guide motifs. Checked rain, shared umbrella, skyline-as-feeling, and `load-bearing`; none occur in the current chapter.

## WATCH Reconciliation

WATCH=103 is dominated by sentence-shape and literal body/object vocabulary. The late Claude passes now on current text return clean for Dialogue Doctor, Comedy Doctor, Positive Prose, Purple Prose, Clarity, Genericization, Narrator-Publicist, Characters-Wrong, Thought Development, Plain Translation, and the relevant register checks. No Claude tic remains open.
