2026-08-25
User:
You are doing a dialogue revoicing pass on three chapters of a novel. Work only in your worktree. Do NOT commit and do not run git commands other than
git diff.Read first, in this order: notes/voices.md (the round-three banned constructions under "Revision (round three)" and the whole "Dialogue rules (round four)" section, which is the spec), notes/llm-tells.md, and the "How they talk" sections of notes/canon/characters/edwin.md, peri.md, redacted.md, mattie-ordish.md, sorrel.md, minor.md. redacted sentence: unpublished prose
Task: go through every exchange of dialogue in each chapter and edit the chapter files directly so the dialogue obeys the ten rules and each speaker's "How they talk" entry. Concretely: (1) every practical question gets a reply whose first sentence answers it in usable terms; (2) no clever or oblique line is left dangling before a scene break, stage direction, or topic change unless the listener visibly gets it or calls it; (3) no reflexive echoes (repeating the previous line as beat-filler) or mirror retorts (reusing the previous line's frame with the ending swapped); (4) no speaker other than Edwin or Sorrel produces the ledger register: definitional "That's X" sentences, balanced antitheses, verdict tails (", which is…"), short drop after a long build; Mattie is short and concrete and never generalises; redacted runs long, piles up numbers and citations, repeats herself when insistent; Peri asks, says things in the wrong order and corrects, is literal; (5) narration bans apply inside quotation marks; (6) exchanges end on work, not on the wittiest line. Leave narration alone except where a dialogue change forces a one-clause adjustment. Do not add facts not already in the chapter or canon; do not add em dashes, "not X but Y", or triads with a swerve. Do not touch the author's-note block after the final
---. Do not change lines that already pass: a plain functional line is fine, and real-person repetition (disbelief, bicker, tense correction) stays.When done, run
git diff --statand return: (a) per chapter, a numbered list of every change as old → new with the rule it serves in a few words; (b) the lines you considered and deliberately left, with why; (c) the worktree path.
I'll start by reading the specs and character notes.
🔧 Read .claude/worktrees/agent-a58267a45956de35b/notes/voices.md
🔧 Read .claude/worktrees/agent-a58267a45956de35b/notes/llm-tells.md
✅ 220 lines, 14313 chars
✅ 509 lines, 31773 chars
🔧 Bash: for f in edwin peri redacted mattie-ordish sorrel minor; do echo "=== $f ==="; awk '/^#…
✅ 1 lines, 422 chars
🔧 Bash: redacted sentence: unpublished prose
✅ 62 lines, 5744 chars
🔧 Bash: grep -n -A 30 -i "how they talk" notes/canon/characters/redacted.md notes/canon/charact…
✅ 117 lines, 11137 chars
Now the chapters.
🔧 Bash: redacted sentence: unpublished prose
✅ 237 lines, 23049 chars
🔧 Bash: redacted sentence: unpublished prose
✅ 277 lines, 25340 chars
🔧 Bash: cat -n chapters/021-leaving-fenholt.md
✅ 189 lines, 17198 chars
Now applying edits. Chapter 9 first.
🔧 Bash: python3 - <<'EOF' import io p='chapters/009-fenholt.md' s=open(p).read() def rep(old,new…
✅ 1 lines, 2 chars — ok
🔧 Bash: python3 - <<'EOF' p='chapters/009-fenholt.md' s=open(p).read() s=s.replace('"I\'ll be the…
✅ 25 lines, 922 chars
🔧 Bash: python3 - <<'EOF' p='chapters/009-fenholt.md' s=open(p).read() s=s.replace('"I\'ll be at…
✅ 1 lines, 4 chars — done
Now chapter 13.
🔧 Bash: python3 - <<'EOF' redacted sentence: unpublished prose s=open(p).read() def rep(old,new…
✅ 1 lines, 2 chars — ok
🔧 Bash: python3 - <<'EOF' redacted sentence: unpublished prose s=open(p).read() old='"By me as…
✅ 46 lines, 3571 chars
Now chapter 21.
🔧 Bash: python3 - <<'EOF' p='chapters/021-leaving-fenholt.md' s=open(p).read() def rep(old,new):…
✅ 74 lines, 5835 chars
🔧 Bash: python3 - <<'EOF' p='chapters/021-leaving-fenholt.md' s=open(p).read() old='"I\'ll take t…
✅ 4 lines, 221 chars
Dialogue revoicing pass complete. Worktree: redacted/.claude/worktrees/agent-a58267a45956de35b`
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
"By me as well. I had it written down..." → "I missed it too. I had it written down..." — consequential one-line fix so her admission still has an antecedent after change 2.→Edwin turned the page over... "They're calling it the redacted." — rule 2 (a practical question gets its answer as the first thing said) and rule 10 / endings-are-cuts (the aphorism is gone from the chapter's final beat, which now cuts on Peri ruling a new page).redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose