2026-08-28
User:
You are testing a proposed cheap replacement for an expensive method, for the novel at redacted. Read
CLAUDE.mdfirst and obey it.Background
A multi-agent experiment gave each character in a scene its own agent, so no character's dialogue was generated in a context containing the others'. It worked, but cost 6–10x a conventional pass. Its own findings (
samples/round6-isolated/findings.md— read this in full, especially §2 and §5) conclude that most of the gain probably came not from context isolation but from the Director writing each line's want as a role-bound instruction before any line was generated — and that a single writer working from a pre-written want-list should recover most of the benefit at about a twentieth of the cost.That confound has never been tested. You are the test.
What to do
Rewrite the same scene the other runs used: the opening scene of
chapters/019-a-question-of-rosters.md— the four dead names struck off the roster at the long table on the twenty-second. Speakers: redacted, redacted, redacted, redacted, Edwin; Peri present and silent. Target 1,200–1,800 words. Same events, facts and canon; you may restage freely but may not change what is true.The method under test, followed strictly and in this order:
- redacted sentence: unpublished prose Wants only. No dialogue, no phrasing, not even a fragment. Get the whole scene's spine down as wants first.
- Then draft the scene normally, as one writer, from the slot list.
- Then score it.
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
Scoring — this is the point of the exercise
Score your scene on the project's own two instruments, exactly as
samples/round6-isolated/findings.md§2 does, so the numbers are comparable:
- Prop-cover: mask every possessive, proper noun, tool, coin, month, date and piece of subject expertise; count what still places.
- Swap test: three lines per speaker in another's mouth; would a reader reject them as impossible? Report the headline number and then separate rejections on standing/fact from rejections on voice alone. The voice-alone row is the real result; the other run's numbers are source 1/15 (7%), multi-agent 5/14 (36%).
Score your own scene honestly. You wrote it, so you are biased; compensate by being harsh, and by scoring the source scene yourself with the same hand rather than trusting the other run's figures for it.
Deliverable
samples/round7-wants/containing:
slots.md— the want-list exactly as written in step 1, before any prose. Do not tidy it afterwards.scene.md— the scene.findings.md— the scores in a table against source and against the multi-agent run; your verdict on whether the wants alone account for the multi-agent gain; where the method helped and where you felt it fighting you; how long it took relative to a normal drafting pass; and an honest statement of what a self-scored single-writer test cannot establish.Then commit.
redacted sentence: unpublished prose Either answer is valuable; do not flatter the cheap method because it would be convenient.
Do not edit anything outside
samples/round7-wants/.Your final message: the three-way score table, your verdict, and one line on what surprised you.
I'll start by reading the required context.
🔧 Bash: redacted sentence: unpublished prose
✅ 35 lines, 689 chars
🔧 Bash: cat samples/round6-isolated/findings.md
✅ 287 lines, 14928 chars
🔧 Bash: cat notes/voices.md
✅ 44 lines, 2191 chars
🔧 Bash: sed -n '150,561p' notes/voices.md
✅ 412 lines, 24371 chars
🔧 Bash: cat notes/voice-exemplars.md && sed -n '1,120p' notes/llm-tells.md
✅ 183 lines, 10969 chars
🔧 Bash: sed -n '120,261p' redacted/notes/llm-tells.md; echo ======; cat redacted/chapters/019…
✅ 144 lines, 8405 chars
🔧 Bash: cat redacted/chapters/019-a-question-of-rosters.md
✅ 199 lines, 21815 chars
🔧 Bash: ls notes/canon/characters/ && sed -n '1,340p' notes/dialogue-voices.md
✅ 348 lines, 23461 chars
🔧 Bash: sed -n '340,620p' notes/dialogue-voices.md
✅ 281 lines, 17017 chars
🔧 Bash: sed -n '620,780p' notes/dialogue-voices.md
✅ 160 lines, 8828 chars
🔧 Bash: cd redacted; for f in edwin redacted peri; do echo "=== $f"; awk '/^#+ .*[Vv]oice/{p=…
✅ 363 lines, 21996 chars
🔧 Bash: cd redacted; echo "=== EDWIN rules"; awk '/^\*\*4\. At an emotional peak/,0' notes/cano…
✅ 101 lines, 6284 chars
🔧 Bash: cd redacted; awk '/^\*\*9\. /,0' notes/canon/characters/edwin.md | head -60; echo "===…
✅ 151 lines, 9610 chars
🔧 Bash: cd redacted; grep -n "redacted\|redacted\|redacted" notes/canon/characters/minor.…
✅ 8 lines, 552 chars
🔧 Bash: cd redacted; sed -n '180,240p' notes/canon/characters/minor.md
✅ 61 lines, 3902 chars
Now chapter 018 and Peri's key rules.
🔧 Bash: cd redacted; tail -60 chapters/018-holm-deep.md; echo "=== PERI RULES"; awk '/^\*\*6\.…
✅ 150 lines, 10062 chars
🔧 Bash: cd redacted; cat samples/round4/parole.md
✅ 110 lines, 5361 chars
Now I have what I need. Step 1: the want-list, before any prose.
🔧 Bash: mkdir -p redacted/samples/round7-wants && cat > redacted/samples/round7-wants/slots.m…
✅ 1 lines, 2 chars
Step 2: the draft.
🔧 Bash: cat > redacted/samples/round7-wants/scene.md <<'EOF' # Round 7 — the scene Written in…
✅ 1 lines, 73 chars
Step 3: scoring. Both instruments, run by hand on my scene and re-run on the source.
🔧 Bash: cat > redacted/samples/round7-wants/findings.md <<'EOF' # Round 7 — wants without agent…
✅ 1 lines, 80 chars
Committed. samples/round7-wants/ has slots.md (27 wants, untidied, including the two bracketed doubts and the struck slot), scene.md (1,500 words, 30 turns), and findings.md.
Prop-cover
| Sample | Turns | Place | Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Source ch. 019, my scoring | 45 | 22 | 49% |
| Source ch. 019, round 6's scoring | 17 | 6 | 35% |
| Multi-agent, round 6's scoring | 16 | 13 | 81% |
| Wants scene, my scoring | 30 | 14 | 47% |
Swap test
| Source (mine) | Multi-agent (r6) | Wants | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Headline | 10/15 (67%) | 12/14 (86%) | 12/15 (80%) |
| On standing/fact | 4/15 | 7/14 | 6/15 |
| On voice alone | 6/15 (40%) | 5/14 (36%) | 6/15 (40%) |
| r6's figure for source | 1/15 (7%) |
Per-speaker voice-alone is identical between source and wants scene: Edwin 3/3, redacted 2/3, redacted 1/3, redacted 0/3, redacted 0/3.
The wants tie the published source and beat it on neither instrument, so they do not demonstrably recover a multi-agent gain — but this round could not find a gain to recover, because the same hand scores the source at 40% voice-alone where round 6 scored it at 7%. redacted sentence: unpublished prose The mechanistic finding is that wants and isolation attack different failures: a want says what a line must do, never who may do it that way, and all four defects in my scene are register bleed into Edwin's constructions (his grading shape, his copula-plus-possessive refusal, his professional modal, his balanced antithesis) — precisely what isolation prevents by construction. Recommendation: keep the wants (cheap, and they caught Edwin's absent-reader warrant sitting in redacted's slot before a word of prose), add a construction-ownership check to editing-pass, and pay one agent to re-score all three scenes blind before adopting or retiring anything. Cost was ~1.2–1.4x a normal draft pass, one context, against round 6's 6–10x.
redacted sentence: unpublished prose