You are doing the "extraction" half of the consistency-backfill proce…
2026-09-02
User:
You are doing the "extraction" half of the consistency-backfill process for a novel project (autoroad). This is a READ-ONLY research task: do not edit, write, or create any files. Do not run git commands. Never read anything under notes/sealed/.
Working directory: redacted
Step 1: Read these canon files in full:
- notes/canon/README.md (defines claim levels: Established/Working/Open questions)
- notes/canon/system.md
- notes/canon/deferred-beats.md
- notes/canon/deferred-questions.md unpublished
- all files in notes/canon/characters/*.md (appearance.md, redacted.md, edwin.md, ferrin.md, redacted.md, mattie-ordish.md, minor.md, peri.md, sorrel.md)
- all files in notes/canon/world/*.md (book-01-map.md, continent.md, demographics.md, development.md, dungeons.md, farm-teaching.md, farming-glossary.md, geography.md, green-revolution.md, healing.md, history.md, institutions.md, magic-explained.md, magic-theory.md, magic.md, silent-soil.md, timeline.md)
Step 2: Read these four scene files in full:
- draft/book-01/scenes/41-calm-hands.md unpublished
- draft/book-01/scenes/42-a-factors-woman.md unpublished
- draft/book-01/scenes/43-two-lines-one-field.md unpublished
- draft/book-01/scenes/44-where-they-stopped-writing.md unpublished
Step 3: For EACH of the four scenes, produce exhaustively but tersely:
- ESTABLISHED FACTS the scene states that canon does not yet record: names, roles, ages, places, distances, prices, dates/days, System text (Skill/Level boxes verbatim), procedures, who-knows-what. Give exact quote + scene number/filename for each.
- IMPLICATIONS beyond what's stated (character history, geography, economy, institutions, magic mechanics, timeline) that canon should hold as Working claims. Cite the scene.
- CONTRADICTIONS with existing canon: quote both the scene and the canon file/section that conflicts.
- OPEN QUESTIONS from notes/canon/deferred-questions.md unpublished that the scene touches, and whether it resolves one (flag if so — open questions should not be resolved casually in prose, so any apparent resolution needs to be flagged as a concern, not silently accepted).
IMPORTANT: Do NOT include anything about the cause of the "silent soil" mystery — that is a sealed answer (notes/sealed/), you must not read that directory, and you must not discuss or speculate about the cause of the rings/circles/silent soil phenomenon. You CAN and SHOULD note plain factual observations from the scenes (geometry measurements, dates, who observed what) since those are on-page facts, but do not speculate about or state what the underlying cause is.
Context useful for judgment: characters include Edwin Moss (an old, ~300-year-old mage), Peri Millbrook (his student, associated with fate magic and now Farm Magic Level 1), Tess (a farm girl, O. surname — "T.O."), Mattie Ordish (a farmer whose field has the "rings"/circular phenomenon under study), Burl (a farmhand), Sorrel (someone with a tower garden), redacted and his brother (barley farmers), Ferrin (someone at "the gate" — check canon for role), redacted (Charter house clerk), redacted redacted (a warden at "the Deep"). The scenes cover: a composting cantrip being taught and Peri getting her first Skill box; a worm-count protocol done publicly to counter a factor's pricing; a second geometric survey line revealing the "rings" don't fit a single circle (two different measured circle-centers, later resolved as measurement/growth-rate artifact per scene 43 unpublished's own on-page reasoning — report only the on-page geometry facts, not the underlying cause); and a visit to the Charter house board revealing a gap in dungeon-clearing records since Milkmonth and a "wardens' slate" logging air-direction at "the Deep"'s mouth.
Step 4: Organize your ENTIRE final output by canon target file, e.g. redacted sentence: unpublished prose — group all findings that would land in that file together, each bullet citing which scene (by filename) it came from. Add a "## Cross-cutting / uncertain" section for anything that doesn't cleanly map to one file.
Step 5: Return the FULL organized markdown text as your final report — this is the primary deliverable, write it out completely, do not summarize that you did the work. End with one line: "COUNTS: N established facts, M implications, K contradictions found."
I'll start by reading the canon files.
🔧 Bash: redacted sentence: unpublished prose unpublished notes/canon/characters/*.md notes/can…
✅ 35 lines, 1470 chars — 84 notes/canon/README.md / 1193 notes/canon/system.md / 201 notes/canon/deferred-beats.md
🔧 Bash: cat draft/book-01/scenes/41-calm-hands.md unpublished draft/book-01/scenes/42-a-factors…
✅ 198 lines, 29585 chars
Scenes read. Now the canon files.
8 tool calls
🔧 Bash: cat notes/canon/README.md notes/canon/deferred-questions.md unpublished notes/canon/def…
✅ 43 lines, 2201 chars
🔧 Bash: cat notes/canon/README.md notes/canon/deferred-questions.md unpublished notes/canon/def…
✅ 43 lines, 2199 chars
🔧 Read redacted: private
✅ 437 lines, 34222 chars
🔧 Read notes/canon/world/timeline.md
✅ 892 lines, 58138 chars
Now the character and world canon files.
34 tool calls
🔧 Read notes/canon/characters/peri.md
✅ 975 lines, 64377 chars
🔧 Bash: sed -n '976,1339p' notes/canon/characters/peri.md | grep -n "Farm\|farm\|cantrip\|compost…
✅ 6 lines, 451 chars
🔧 Read notes/canon/world/farm-teaching.md
✅ 279 lines, 18507 chars
🔧 Bash: grep -n "Farm Magic\|farm skill\|Skill unlocked\|nudge" notes/canon/system.md | head -60
✅ 25 lines, 1796 chars
🔧 Bash: sed -n '55,200p;460,600p;1060,1100p;1160,1193p' notes/canon/system.md
✅ 361 lines, 21075 chars
🔧 Bash: sed -n '1,120p' notes/canon/characters/mattie-ordish.md; echo ===; grep -n "Tess\|Burl\|redacted…
✅ 122 lines, 6759 chars
🔧 Bash: grep -n "Tess\|Burl\|redacted\|redacted\|Sennet\|redacted" notes/canon/characters/m…
✅ 32 lines, 2408 chars
🔧 Bash: sed -n '125,240p' notes/canon/characters/minor.md
✅ 115 lines, 7051 chars
🔧 Bash: grep -n "board\|Charter house\|wool hall\|slate\|dues\|guildmaster" notes/canon/world/ins…
✅ 24 lines, 1706 chars
🔧 Bash: sed -n '55,140p' notes/canon/world/institutions.md
✅ 86 lines, 5331 chars
🔧 Bash: grep -n "air\|breath\|mouth\|chain across\|slate" notes/canon/world/dungeons.md | head -60
✅ 31 lines, 2249 chars
🔧 Bash: sed -n '40,80p;280,300p' notes/canon/world/dungeons.md
✅ 61 lines, 3628 chars
🔧 Bash: grep -n "blessing\|12 Seedmonth\|gate\|Day nought\|day zero" notes/canon/characters/ferri…
✅ 52 lines, 3889 chars
🔧 Bash: sed -n '80,130p;150,200p' notes/canon/world/silent-soil.md
✅ 102 lines, 5946 chars
🔧 Bash: sed -n '25,60p' notes/canon/characters/ferrin.md; echo ---; grep -n "chain\|slate\|mouth\…
✅ 49 lines, 2915 chars
🔧 Bash: grep -rn "angr\|sour\|asked angrily\|hears who" notes/canon/world/*.md notes/canon/charac…
✅ 20 lines, 2107 chars
🔧 Bash: sed -n '60,100p' notes/canon/world/magic-explained.md; echo ---; sed -n '25,45p' notes/ca…
✅ 63 lines, 3620 chars
Canon and scenes read. Writing the organized extraction now.
characters/peri.md
Established (new)
[Skill unlocked: Farm Magic - Level 1.] — Peri's box, verbatim, at the trough after turning Mattie's heap, 27 Cornmonth (41-calm-hands.md unpublished). Note the box uses a spaced hyphen, not the em dash of the canon exemplar in system.md ("Skill unlocked: Swordsmanship — Level 1.").
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose- Turned the whole heap by hand with Tess, an hour's work, outside-to-middle, every forkful (41).
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose It isn't that. redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
- Initialled the sheet P.M. and turned it round for redacted to read (42).
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose It stops the next threepence." (42)
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
Implications (Working)
- Scene 41 unpublished redacted sentence: unpublished prose
- Her cross-class farm magic arrives with the same skill-out discipline she uses for the sword and the fifty guesses; the daily-not-weekly drill ruling is now her own stated practice in a second skill (41).
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted theme made operational at Day 13.
- Her people-craft here is an argument aimed at a third party who is not present (the factor), a new register for her.
redacted sentence: unpublished prose Flag for the voice files, not canon.
characters/mattie-ordish.md
Established (new)
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
- She has a dog (on Tess's foot, 41).
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
- Granted redacted a copy of the count "at the mill … when it was fair-copied" (42).
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted, and it has not moved in fifty years (43) — new family/farm fact.
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
- Her ruling on the three causes: "Write all three." (43)
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
characters/minor.md
Tess Ordish (15) — established (new)
- Milking done by seven; sits on the mounting block through the cantrip lesson (41).
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
- Recorded on the count sheet as one of the counters with her age against her name (42).
Burl — established (new)
- Dug at the worm count (42); held the gatepost end of the cord and chain for the west line, and held the gatepost end of both lines on the 15th rerun (43).
redacted — established (new)
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose ≈13 Cornmonth (42).
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted's brother — established (new)
- Present at the count, has his own place, said quietly to redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose
Sennet's boy — established (new)
redacted sentence: unpublished prose A new named-by-relation minor with an age on record.
redacted — established (new)
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose
- Refuses the board posting in procedure, not opinion: "it was not Charter work. redacted sentence: unpublished prose
- "The board's public … That's what it's for." (44)
- On the wardens' slate: "It's the air. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose It says In. It always says In." (44)
- Names redacted redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose She generally is." (44) — his first line with warmth in it; flag for the redacted voice rules, which currently allow him no opinions.
The alehouse keeper — established (new)
redacted sentence: unpublished prose He had wanted them to.") (42).
Guildmaster redacted** — established (new)
- Still at his sister's on 29 Cornmonth at the time of the board visit (44). See contradiction 3.
characters/edwin.md
**Established (new)
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose This one's started." (41)
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
- Puts his own hand on the heap while she casts, to feel it (41).
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
- Self-correction on the page: he had opened his mouth to make the wider-question/redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose I'd have talked about the redacted." (42)
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
Implications (Working)
- "some thousands of faces" (41) sits awkwardly against ch. 025's "about two hundred taught" in the first eighty years and the compost "going by itself" after ~140 years. Reconcilable over 330 years, but the figure should not be hardened; record as Working and do not build a taught-count on it.
- "three hundred years" of casting (41) is idiomatic rounding against ~331 years since he left Wystow; consistent with the house rule (speech, not record).
characters/ferrin.md
redacted sentence: unpublished prose Confirms ferrin.md's Day-nought entry and gives it a scene.
- Peri's question that prompts it: "Does he get told? redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose
characters/redacted.md
- Named to Edwin and Peri for the first time by redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose
- "She'll be in before six. She generally is." (44) — a habit on record.
- Her 28 Cornmonth visit is now doubly recorded (her own account in ch. 014, and the slate).
characters/sorrel.md
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
world/farm-teaching.md
Established (new)
- The compost cantrip's teaching sequence in full, on the page: dry casts to check the wrists → what the heap is for → what the cantrip does → live cast → the turn, by hand, immediately after (41).
- The cantrip's limit stated by the student and confirmed: "It doesn't make anything. redacted sentence: unpublished prose Six days instead of a season. redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
- The class's recitable line for the limit: "the heap hears who is asking. redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
- Confounding acknowledged: cantrip and turning cannot be separated without a control heap (41).
- Fenholt's parish did not get the compost cantrip from the teacher of forty years back — only the blessing (Tess, 41). Confirms and hardens the farm-teaching entry.
Implications (Working)
- The dry-cast-then-live progression, with the wrists as the teacher's instrument, is the parish course's actual pedagogy and should be the pattern wherever the five are taught.
- The parish course's limit-sentences are taught as sentences, unexplained, and teachers pass them on without knowing the reason — a transmission fact with succession-theme weight.
world/magic.md and world/magic-explained.md
Established (new)
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
Contradiction / tension
magic-explained.md ll. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose unpublished redacted sentence: unpublished prose Not a hard contradiction (authorial framing vs. in-world knowledge), but canon should record that no character knows the mechanism, and magic-explained.md's sentence must never be spoken by anyone on the page.
world/system.md (canon target: system.md)
Established (new)
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose unpublished") — no new deferral resolved improperly; it was pre-ruled.
- The box-format entry needs amendment: the scene's box uses a spaced hyphen, per the project's no-em-dash rule. Canon currently records the unlock exemplar with an em dash (ch. 018). One of the two needs to be the standard.
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose Everybody does." (41) ✓ ch. 007.
Implication (Working)
- Peri's three boxes to date, by her own count, are the Day 1 binding/class material, [Fate Magic] 2 (Day 8), and [Farm Magic] 1 (Day 13). If canon wants the count exact, the third-draft box inventory should be reconciled — her tally is on the page and a reader can check it.
world/silent-soil.md
Established (new)
redacted sentence: unpublished prose Canon has held the shape of these counts but not the outside series.
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
- Day zero ruled and the reasoning given verbatim: "The twelfth of Seedmonth. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose This is a measurement-quality fact canon should hold: the two lines are not equally reliable instruments.
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose Nobody's thumb slipped forty yards." (43)
- The three unranked possibles, verbatim (43): (1) "It isn't a circle. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose Stump line: nine chains seventy-three. West line: six chains eighteen. (43) ✓ canon.
- Cause three struck "Legibly. redacted sentence: unpublished prose Forty yards was never my hands. It's the field." (43)
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose It keeps stopping at your redacted." (43)
Contradiction
- redacted sentence: unpublished prose unpublished says forty throughout and prices it as "the best part of two chains." The parenthetical "thirty yards" is a stale figure inside canon's own entry and should be corrected to forty.
Open-question contact — flag
redacted sentence: unpublished prose unpublished — but scene 43 unpublished redacted sentence: unpublished prose Note the precedent; do not let it be read as resolving the Day 44 question.
- The row "The four sites' redacted of beginning"** — untouched.
- The scene deliberately declines to rank causes and declines to name a mechanism, which is the correct standing posture (
deferred-questions.md §0: canon stays agnostic permanently).
world/institutions.md
**Established (new)
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
- Board contents, itemised (44), all consistent with ch. 012's canon entry, with these additions:
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted Wardens).
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
- The clerk's authority boundary: he writes only what the guildmaster gives him; the board is not for outside counts; the board is public to read (44).
Implication (Working)
redacted sentence: unpublished prose 012) now has its worked example, with the undated hiring notice as a second, softer signal of the same institutional stall.
world/dungeons.md
Established (new) — the wardens' slate
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted's)
- The procedure, per redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose
- Its status: "It's always been kept. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose
- "It says In. It always says In." (44) — the record has never, in living clerk memory, said Out.
Implications (Working)
- The mouth-air test has a two-slate paper trail: the slate at the chain (canon, chs. 014/018) and its mirror at the house. The house's copy is the one that can be read by anybody who thinks to look inside the hood, and nobody does.
- Three visits in three weeks in three hands implies roughly fortnightly warden visits and a rotation of at least three wardens on Holm Deep before 28 Cornmonth.
- The 7 and 14 Cornmonth entries are new dated observations and do not collide with redacted's ch. 014 list (2, 5, 7 Harvestmonth + 28 Cornmonth) — but the bare "the seventh" in both places is a collision hazard for future drafters and should be recorded with its month.
world/timeline.md
All four scenes sit on already-established days and every checkable figure agrees. Additions:
redacted sentence: unpublished prose Timeline currently records only the worm count for Day 13.
- Day 13, 16:00 — the first protocol worm count (42) ✓ canon.
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
- Day 14 (28 Cornmonth) — west line laid, 6 ch 20 (43) ✓; the mouth's slate entry, 10:00, In (44 — this is the Charter-house copy of redacted's 28 Cornmonth reading, ch. 014).
- Day 15 (29 Cornmonth), morning — Edwin at the gate with Ferrin, day zero given in writing (44); both lines rerun, 9 ch 73 unpublished / 6 ch 18 (43) ✓.
- Day 15, afternoon — the Charter house; the fair copy carried down; redacted's refusal; the board read; the slate found (44).
- 7 Cornmonth, forenoon and 14 Cornmonth, 16:00 — mouth drew air In (44). New dated observations for the mouth series, earlier than any previously recorded.
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
Contradictions
2. The three-week slate span. Peri: "Three in three weeks" for entries dated 7, 14 and 28 Cornmonth. redacted sentence: unpublished prose No fix needed; recorded so a later drafter does not "correct" it.
- redacted's whereabouts and the Deep's new date.**
world/timeline.md Day 15 records "**redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose 012), alongside the board being read the same day. Scene 44 unpublished redacted sentence: unpublished prose no new date yet on Day 15. The third draft has evidently moved redacted's ruling later than the board scene, or off Day 15 entirely. redacted sentence Flagging, not ruling.
world/geography.md
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
- The Ordish farm has a north-walled yard with cobbles, byre, stable, mounting block and trough (41).
- The top field's south redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
world/development.md and the parish economy
Established (new)
redacted sentence: unpublished prose This is a substantive new economic fact — the unit of pricing is the parish, not the farm — and it explains why one field's rumour docks forty farms.
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
- redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose
Implication (Working)
redacted sentence: unpublished prose Worth recording as the origin of a practice redacted later formalises.
Cross-cutting / uncertain
redacted sentence: unpublished prose If Tess is one of the four counters (her age, fifteen, is one of the two Peri cites), then "hands in the ground" is loose; if not, a fourth counter is unnamed. Needs a ruling before the sheet is quoted again.
- Box punctuation. Spaced hyphen in scene 41 unpublished's box vs the em dash in
system.md's exemplar. A house-wide decision, since it governs every future box.
- Who knows what, as of Day 15. Ferrin knows he is day zero (44). The parish knows the inside counts are zero (42). redacted will have a copy at the mill (42). The Charter has been asked and refused (44). Wystow has not yet received the sheet — day zero goes to Ferrin "before it goes to Wystow" (42). The factor is the intended eventual reader and has not read anything.
- Nothing in these four scenes speculates about the cause of the field, and the two surviving possibles are both geometric. That posture is correct and should be recorded as such; the third possible was struck for a stated methodological reason, not a substantive one.
- No deferred question is resolved improperly. The only trigger fired — the System farm skill's name — was pre-ruled on 2026-08-30 specifically against scene 41 unpublished, and the scene delivers exactly the ruled box. redacted sentence: unpublished prose unpublished" (anticipatory) to Established.
COUNTS: 71 established facts, 14 implications, 3 contradictions found.