2026-08-30

A full second act, dozens of scenes, was drafted and then thrown away the same evening once a contamination problem was found in it.

David and Claude finished the first act’s remaining scenes, then rewrote the series’ overall shape around its central theme, deciding the ending concretely enough to plan backward from it.

Then they drafted the whole second act, some sixty-five scenes, in one push, checking it against the project’s canon rules and editorial standards as they went. Late that evening, using a new tool that checks scenes for overlap with older material, built the day before, David and Claude found that the new draft was too close to older, previously rejected material, close enough that it read as recycled rather than freshly written. They pulled the entire act and moved it into a folder marked “do not open”. A rule blocking that specific kind of contamination went straight into the project’s voice guide, in a section later drafting sessions have to check themselves against.

Two of that act’s scenes were rewritten from a clean brief the same night to confirm the new process actually worked, and it did. Files holding answers meant to stay hidden from the writers were also reorganised, so editing them routes through a subagent, which keeps their contents out of the visible commit history this site’s transcripts are built from.

David then wrote a detailed handoff document for the next session, setting out the brief for redrafting the second and third acts under all of that day’s decisions. He also reworked the top-level planning file into an orientation document rather than a working scratchpad.

Session transcripts: continuing from 27 August, evening handoff and redraft (continuing into 31 August)