Run the pre-David pass exactly as specified in [redacted]/.claude/ski…

I'll start by reading the skill and the context files.

Findings below. Both files changed on disk mid-pass (overlap runs fixed, "grid"→"chessboard", Peri's note in 100); I read the current state and my findings are against that.

Scene 99 unpublished — Seventy miles in eleven days

1. redacted sentence: unpublished prose
   The fifteen is already road distance ("The first fifteen miles"), so walking it is fifteen miles, not twenty. The figure only works if the fifteen is straight-line. redacted sentence: unpublished prose

2. Part 1 (fact that does not parse). "had been right on the twelfth and was right on the thirteenth and would be right on the fifteenth."
Right about what on the twelfth? Nothing had been walked yet; the triple is a rhythm, not three verifications. Canon (timeline, Days 58–61) has the 12th a day at redacted and departure on the 13th. → "and had said three days, and was right on the thirteenth, and was right on the fourteenth, and would be right on the fifteenth."

3. redacted sentence: unpublished prose
   The sentence says there is no perceptible boundary and then names the boundary in the same breath. Also the personified road is a gesture (Part 2). redacted sentence: unpublished prose

4. redacted sentence: unpublished prose
   "the shape of it/them" is on the banned list (SKILL Part 2). redacted sentence: unpublished prose

5. Part 2 / VOICE §2 (aphorism budget). "a man walking it walked twenty miles to make fifteen" and "the road went into and did not notice it had" are two narrator epigrams in one ~1,000-word scene; the budget is one, usually none. Keep the road one only if 1 and 3 are taken; otherwise cut the personification.

6. VOICE §2 dialect ruling (2026-08-31). "I'll not know today" (Edwin); "I'd not have said I could" (Edwin).
"I'll not" is expressly retired — "particularly weird". redacted sentence: unpublished prose

7. Part 1 (antecedent) + redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted. 'On the dry road. I wrote it down. It's the one thing in your book I've struck.'"
   Two books are in play and the line puts her striking a line in Edwin's grey book, which she has no business in; and "It's the one thing in your book I've struck" rounds the speech off on a verdict, which redacted.md rule 1 says she does not do (she may end on a fact or a reason; she does not close with an epigram). redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose I've struck it out.'"

8. Part 5 (recitation that should be conversation) + Part 2 (button). redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose
It is a composed monologue of 150 words that delivers six pieces of business — her name, the register, the library, the slip, redacted, redacted, the parcel — plus a withheld-punchline ending. Nobody says all that to a man who has just come through the door; and the last clause is exactly the resolving button VOICE §2 rules against. Her canon voice (minor.md) is short, unsittable, and chases. → Break it: she says "Goodman Moss," writes the slip, hands it over ("redacted. The register of sites is mine."), Edwin asks where the field office is, she answers ("Town end of redacted. redacted will be in it."), Peri or redacted asks about the library, she answers ("Up the stair. redacted sentence: unpublished prose It will keep until tomorrow." Cut "because you have been walking."

9. Part 2 (empty "because") — one of eight in ~1,000 words. "and Edwin told her, walking, because it was a thing he knew".
Everything he tells anyone is a thing he knows; the reason is empty, and it spends one of the scene's eight becauses. → "and Edwin told her, walking:" — with the colon carrying the list.

10. because density. Eight in 99, eight in 100, against SCENES.md's act-three "because rationed". redacted sentence: unpublished prose Target four per scene.

11. Part 3 (a figure the world may not own). "squared off like a chessboard."
Check that this world has chess before the figure stands; if it does not, the plots are what they are. redacted sentence: unpublished prose

12. Part 1 (word doing a job it cannot). "a legal fence round the outside."
No flat restatement: a fence that is lawful? statutory? enclosing land held by title? redacted sentence: unpublished prose

13. Part 5 (the device) + Part 3 (would this happen). "because Peri was reading the register of sites over his shoulder, upside down, and had gone very still. / 'There's a page for Fenholt. It's got a date on it from before we got there.'"
This is the scene's real device and it will draw a second comment. The register of sites is redacted's, she is mid-audit-mindedness, and it is lying open on a public counter for a stranger to read upside down; the scene's biggest fact arrives by set dressing rather than by anyone doing anything. It is also a hook-button — a reveal held to the last line to make the reader turn the page, which is the resolving-button family (VOICE §2). Either make the register a thing redacted shows them (she turns it round: "Fenholt's in it. It has been since Cornmonth, and I should like to know who told us"), which makes the fact somebody's act and keeps redacted's chase alive; or cut the reveal here and let it land in 101 where Peri has a library slip and standing to read. Do not repair it by rewording Peri's line.

14. Structure (Part 1, transition). The scene opens on the middle day's rain and then paragraph 2 restarts on the twelfth and re-walks all three days, so the rain arrives twice and the reader has to re-file the opening. The opening itself is fine as an event; the fix is in paragraph 2. → Begin paragraph 2 "redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose

Scene 100 unpublished — The sending-book

15. redacted sentence: unpublished prose That's six weeks." And redacted's closing "I'd have done it on the fifteenth of Cornmonth…"
    Canon (timeline.md, "redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose 15 Cornmonth is Day 1 — the day Peri arrived, four days before the college's letter even reached him, so he cannot have asked. And 15 Corn → 15 Fal is sixty days, i.e. eight and a half weeks, not six; the twenty-fifth is what makes "six weeks" true. → "the twenty-fifth of Cornmonth" in both places.

16. redacted sentence: unpublished prose
    redacted sentence: unpublished prose He wanted nothing on the 14th. redacted sentence: unpublished prose

17. redacted sentence: unpublished prose
    Two boxes are being conflated. Canon: the college's own sample box arrived Day 6 (20 Cornmonth) with a letter — that is the one Edwin says is redacted's; the mis-sorted redacted parcel went up the hill 16 Cornmonth (Day 2). Edwin left for Fenholt Day 7 (21 Corn), so "the next morning" is a dependent of the wrong date. redacted sentence: unpublished prose

18. redacted sentence: unpublished prose
    Fenholt was Day 9 to Day 50 — forty-one days, six weeks. redacted sentence: unpublished prose

19. Part 2 (banned family) + flash-forward. "it was the first thing he wrote about the man afterwards, because it was the whole of him in a sentence."
"the whole of it" is explicitly banned ("continues to be a weird recurring phrase that you should avoid"), and the sentence flashes forward to a later writing-up to license a portrait paragraph. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose

20. SCENES.md act-three openings rule (binding). "redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose
This is precisely NAME + verb + TIME + trailer, which the act-three list bans by name; start on the event or the object. redacted sentence: unpublished prose

21. Part 1 (circular reason) + because count. "doing the thing he did at that hour because it was the hour he did it."
The reason restates the fact. redacted sentence: unpublished prose He was doing it at nine because he did it at nine, and had for a dozen years." — or cut; the picture already says it.

22. redacted sentence: unpublished prose
    "wants [noun]" for needs is retired by name, and "I'll not" with it. redacted sentence: unpublished prose

23. redacted.md rules 4 and 7a (and Part 2, epigram). "'It did.' redacted looked at him. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose
    This is a composed two-half line with the point in the second half at an emotional peak — Edwin's construction, banned for redacted by name (7a), where his rule 4 says he says nothing or one procedural clause. It is also the best-turned sentence in the scene, which is the tell. → "'It did.' redacted put his hand on the box lid. 'I wrote that in my own day book on the twenty-sixth. I've not said it to anybody.'" — a page, a date, custody; the feeling arrives sideways, which is his shape.

24. redacted sentence: unpublished prose
    Two problems. (a) redacted.md, ch. 029: redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose unpublished spent its last exchange establishing exactly that ("I wrote it because it's the obvious thing to ask a college for" / "As a thing about the obvious"). Scene 100 unpublished then hands the discovery back to the Weave. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose That's what it meant." Cut "I don't know what a Weave is" / "No. You don't need to." and "and your book was ready".

25. redacted sentence: unpublished prose She worked this out on the spoil bank in 98 and it is hers to deliver. → Give her the sentence: Edwin says "Four plots, redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose

26. Part 1 (viewpoint knowledge). "He looked at Peri, who had the notebook out and had written Plowmonth and underlined it, and had written under it the third line, and had not looked up."
Edwin is seated at the boxing board with the register; Peri is behind his shoulder with her own notebook, and the clause explicitly says she did not look up, i.e. did not show him. He cannot read it. → "He looked at Peri. redacted sentence: unpublished prose

27. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose overlap_check will not catch them because they are under eight words, and canon-quoted groundwork lines are expressly "a fact about what happened, never a line to reuse". redacted sentence: unpublished prose

28. redacted sentence: unpublished prose
    The same self-characterising formula twice in one exchange, and the first is pure preamble. Edwin does not announce his own annual rules. redacted sentence: unpublished prose

29. redacted sentence: unpublished prose
    The triple is a cadence and the middle term is grand where the other two are exact. The gesture the line wants — that redacted is being given the freedom to despise it and the instruction not to contradict it — survives on two terms. redacted sentence: unpublished prose You'll not correct it." (rewritten for the dialect ruling: "You won't correct it.")

Otherwise the speech reads as his: flat, foundational, information she — he — will need. It is long, but at 130 words on a decision of this weight that is within his range (cf. 96, 98) and I would not cut it for length.

30. SCENES.md act-three rule ("No scene ends on writing more than one in three") + the motif. "Peri wrote that down."
97 ends on redacted writing, 98 ends on Peri writing ("I'm writing that down"), 100 ends on Peri writing: three of the last four. Worse, as an ending it functions as applause — it tells the reader redacted's last line was quotable, which converts a good bitter line into an epigram with a caption. → End on redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose

31. redacted sentence: unpublished prose
    This is a good line and it is an epigram — balanced halves, the sting in the second — which is Edwin's shape, not redacted's (7a), and it is a resolving button. It is close enough to worth keeping that I would keep it if finding 23 is taken and this is his only composed line in the scene; two of them and he reads as a small Edwin. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose

Answers to the two questions the brief asked directly

• 99's ending is a cliffhanger button, not a cut, and its problem is the device (finding 13), not the sentence.
• redacted's counter speech** is a composed monologue, not hers (finding 8). redacted's "second time I've heard that" is composed (23); his closing line is composed but arguably earned (31). Edwin's lie speech is his in register and length; only the two "this year" formulas and the triple need work (28, 29).

The two devices a second round would be about

1. **Discovery arriving as scenery rather than as somebody's act — the register open on the counter in 99, Peri's notebook read past her shoulder in 100. Both hand the reader a fact nobody in the room chose to give. Fixing it means deciding who discloses what, to whom, and why they would: redacted turns the register round because she wants to know who told them; Peri says the calendar line herself because it is hers.
2. The pen as punctuation — three of the last four scenes end on someone writing, and in 100 the writing stands in for a reaction. It works when writing is the work (97's redacted writing the third no against her own wish is the good version); it fails when it is a caption on a good line. Cap it at one scene-ending in three and never let it follow an epigram.