Run the pre-David pass on a scene. The brief is [redacted]/.claude/sk…

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2026-08-31

User:

Run the pre-David pass on a scene. The brief is redacted/.claude/skills/pre-david-pass/SKILL.md — read the whole file first and follow it exactly, including the Standing caution (a finding that removes a reason, an answer, an explanation or a qualification is wrong unless the thing is nonsense or does not fit; never propose an ending change on "cadence" grounds; where dialogue is compressed to code, the finding is elaborate, with the elaboration supplied) and the 2026-08-31 additions. Your report is advisory; the main session decides.

Then read, in full:

Read ONLY the files listed above. Do not open, search, glob or grep any other directory or file; do not use grep or find at all.

Context: scene 26 is Day 7 afternoon on the fen causeway — the first lesson. The author asked for this scene to be where Edwin starts insisting on teaching Peri farm magic ("You want the foundations? ... The Weave told you I was the best person to teach you magic, and what I know how to teach is farm magic, so we start from there. Once you've got the basics, maybe we can figure out some of your fate magic" — his words for the direction, not the wording). The terms exchange enacts a standing ruling: Edwin's authority over Peri is a bargain (student on ground he understands, told why — afterwards if urgent, no say on the road or the quest), and she sets terms back. Check: every exchange understandable without the previous scene; reasons on the page; Edwin's teaching-paragraph licence (one composed teaching paragraph per scene, last sentence a bare fact, never a proverb; no anaphora at a peak; his short lines grade or balance; framing-correction-then-answer is his passport); Peri likeable, her engine fed not mocked, her false-start tell used at most lightly; em-dash budget ~2/1000; at most one narrator aphorism; the warning-sign constructions ("[amount] of it", "the whole of it", "I'll say it", "to be mine", "it's against you", bare-noun replies, portentous implication, "Item:"); viewpoint knowledge; counts and clocks; whether any line is a joke or claim the character could not sincerely make; whether any figure is drawn from an economy or technology this world does not have.

Report per the skill's "How to report": findings only, quote + Part/bullet + one sentence why + replacement or "cut", Part 1 first; then the two closing lines about any device a second round would be about. Your final message is the report.

I'll start by reading the skill brief and all the listed files.

36 tool calls

🔧 Read .claude/skills/pre-david-pass/SKILL.md

✅ 426 lines, 27364 chars

🔧 Read draft/book-01/VOICE.md

✅ 232 lines, 14540 chars

🔧 Read draft/book-01/scenes/26-a-ceiling-you-recharge-to.md

✅ 52 lines, 7346 chars

🔧 Bash: cd redacted/draft/book-01/scenes && cat 02-a-war-horse-on-a-milk-cart.md 13-when-did-yo… (Read prior scenes)

✅ 233 lines, 18513 chars

🔧 Bash: cd redacted/draft/book-01/scenes && cat 22-the-price-of-a-mule.md 24-which-way-at-the-b… (Read scenes 22-25)

✅ 125 lines, 13729 chars

🔧 Bash: cd redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose (Read canon files)

✅ 44 lines, 2209 chars

🔧 Bash: cd redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose (Sizes)

✅ 4 lines, 105 chars — 61263 characters/edwin.md / 81560 characters/peri.md / 17076 world/magic-explained.md

🔧 Bash: cd redacted/notes/canon && cat world/magic-explained.md (magic-explained)

✅ 301 lines, 16987 chars

🔧 Bash: sed -n '1,400p' redacted/notes/canon/characters/edwin.md (edwin part 1)

✅ 399 lines, 24770 chars

🔧 Bash: sed -n '400,900p' redacted/notes/canon/characters/edwin.md (edwin part 2)

✅ 36 lines, 2213 chars

🔧 Bash: sed -n '400,650p' redacted/notes/canon/characters/edwin.md (edwin 400-650)

✅ 250 lines, 15516 chars

🔧 Bash: sed -n '650,1000p' redacted/notes/canon/characters/edwin.md (edwin 650-1000)

✅ 322 lines, 20780 chars

🔧 Bash: sed -n '1,260p' redacted/notes/canon/characters/peri.md (peri 1)

✅ 260 lines, 15993 chars

🔧 Bash: sed -n '260,560p' redacted/notes/canon/characters/peri.md (peri 2)

✅ 301 lines, 19519 chars

🔧 Bash: sed -n '560,900p' redacted/notes/canon/characters/peri.md (peri 3)

✅ 341 lines, 20970 chars

🔧 Bash: sed -n '900,1300p' redacted/notes/canon/characters/peri.md (peri 4)

✅ 400 lines, 22685 chars

🔧 Bash: sed -n '1300,1600p' redacted/notes/canon/characters/peri.md (peri 5)

✅ 30 lines, 2204 chars

🔧 Bash: cd redacted/draft/book-01/scenes && python3 -c " t=open('26-a-ceiling-you-recharge-to.m… (counts)

✅ 2 lines, 19 chars

Findings

Part 1 — sense, facts, counts

  1. "There was a windpump turning slowly over a ditch to their left, the first Peri had ever seen" — Part 1, Viewpoint knowledge ("does Edwin know this?"). The POV is Edwin; nothing on the page tells him it is her first. Replacement: "the first either of them had walked past that morning" or, keeping the point through her: "and Peri looked at it the way she had looked at his kitchen."

  2. "I've been assuming for six days that it was wrong, or that it meant something sideways" — Part 1, contradicts an established scene. In scene 02 he has already concluded the opposite on the first afternoon: "He could not say the Weave had got that one wrong." Replacement: "I couldn't tell you on the first afternoon that it was wrong, and I've done nothing about that for six days. That's my fault and not the Weave's."

  3. "you are already the most practised person at it that I could reach by letter" — Part 1, a fact overstated into a falsehood, and does the justification distinguish? Fate magic sits with high priests and the Concord's Seers, who are reachable by letter and are far more practised; his own true version (scene 05) was bounded to the vale. Replacement: "and the people who have it are high priests at the end of long lives. I've had no letter out of the Concord in forty years and I don't know that anybody there would answer one."

  4. "Most people believe the ceiling is dealt out at the Choosing, like height. It isn't." against, twelve lines later, "Everybody has the sentence" and Peri's "everybody knows that" — Part 1, a scene that contradicts itself; the lesson's whole point is that the sentence is common and the doing is rare, so the setup must not be that people believe the opposite. Replacement: "Every mage can tell you how a pool grows. Ask one and you'll get it back word for word."

  5. "One question a day and it's spent before breakfast" — Part 1, contradicts established Peri (scene 13: "Now I don't ask until there's a question worth a whole day. Most days there isn't"). Replacement: "One question a day, and most days I don't spend even that."

  6. "and I've been saying the sentence to anyone who'd stand still for three hundred years" — Part 1, weird phrasing: as written, the people are standing still for three hundred years. Replacement: "and for three hundred years I've been saying the sentence to anybody who'd stand still."

  7. "The man on your coach had the fact right and the story wrong." — Part 1, a reference the reader cannot resolve unaided (VOICE §2, every exchange understandable without the previous scene). Replacement: "The man on your coach who told you I had the largest pool alive had the fact right and the story wrong."

  8. "The first one wants a muck heap, and a good one, so it keeps until Fenholt." — Part 1, a cause left out: why a good one is never said, and the reason is real and interesting. Replacement: "The first one wants a muck heap, and a good one, because all the cantrip does is tell a heap to finish what it was already doing. Tell a bad heap to finish and you get a bad heap sooner. So it keeps until Fenholt."

  9. "your columns" (in the list of what he does not rule) — Part 1, a fact ahead of the clock: the say/know double columns are not established until Fenholt, and on Day 7 the reader has seen a notebook and no columns. Replacement: "your notebook".

  10. "the way he would have tried to lead her in a fortnight" — Part 1, the phrase says manner and carries time; it does not restate flat. Replacement: "and he had been planning to spend a fortnight leading her to it."

  11. "she watched it the whole time they sat under it" — Part 1, self-contradiction with the same sit: during it she has the notebook out, a page already headed, and writes "Farm magic" at the top. Replacement: "and she looked back up at it between mouthfuls the whole time they sat under it."

  12. "eating Mrs Hobbet's breakfasts" — Part 1, check the clock: they left at dawn, crossed the bridge at noon, and this is three miles further on. Replacement: "eating Mrs Hobbet's breakfasts several hours later than she had meant them to be eaten".

  13. "I have watched you do more magic before breakfast than I have done since the spring" — Part 1, a specific she has not been shown: the class is at ten and the rain at half past twelve; nothing of his happens before breakfast. Replacement: "more magic in a morning than I have done since the spring".

Part 2 — the gesture at meaning

  1. "The page turned." — Part 2, an agentless portentous fragment where a plain act is meant. Replacement: "She turned to a clean page."

  2. "That's the whole of my authority and it ends at the edge of what I know." — Part 2, the banned family (2026-08-31: "'the whole of it' continues to be a weird recurring phrase that you should avoid"). Replacement: "That is all the authority I'm claiming, and it ends at the edge of what I know."

  3. "it's the nearest thing my trade has to a secret, and I'm going to give it to you for nothing, because it isn't one" — Part 5, redundancy: the same joke is the payoff twelve lines later ("That's why I can give it away on a causeway for nothing"), and pre-announcing it spends it. Replacement for the opener: "It's about mana, and it's the most useful thing I know."

Part 3 — would this exist in a real world

  1. redacted sentence: unpublished prose Replacement: "the same pool at two hundred that they had at thirty".

Part 4 — why would this character say this

  1. "Your road, your quest, your fate magic, your columns: not mine." — Part 4 / the teaching-licence rules: four-fold anaphora at the peak of his terms speech, which edwin.md 4 names a defect in his mouth however good the line. Replacement: "Where you go, what the quest is, what you do with your fate magic — I don't rule any of that. I only argue about it."

  2. "It isn't that I train the wrong things. redacted sentence: unpublished prose Replacement: "'Then that's what's wrong with my training,' said Peri, reading her own page. 'I've been asking what to train. I haven't got anything I can spend. One question a day, and most days I don't spend even that. That isn't enough emptying to move anything.'"

  3. "Ten parishes of them, wanting rain at half past twelve and frost warnings and forty other things, every day" — Part 4, edwin.md 7a: the inventory pile joined by "and" is redacted's and banned for him. Replacement: "Ten parishes of them, wanting rain at half past twelve on a named day, every day, for three hundred years."

  4. Peri's terms speech runs three "and"s ("and I'll keep a list, and I'll ask again … and your reasons") — Part 4, her hard cap is two. Replacement: "Later is fine, but then you owe it. I'll keep a list and I'll ask again."

Part 6 — weak where it should be strong

  1. redacted sentence: unpublished prose This is both. Replacement: move the mechanism up and end on his own figure — "…so nothing in their life ever empties it again. redacted sentence: unpublished prose

  2. "I've yet to meet thirty people who did the thing" — Part 6, plainer form available. Replacement: "I've met fewer than thirty people who did the thing."

  3. "He got up, and settled the pack, and they walked on along the causeway." — Part 6, a chain of "and"s in a physical beat. Replacement: "He got up, settled the pack, and they walked on along the causeway."

  4. "The rest of it is knowing which work, and almost nobody does it even so, because every day is the part that costs." — Part 5, redundancy: the rarity has already been given twice (the thirty people; most mages at thirty). Replacement: "The rest of it is knowing which work, and every day is the part that costs."

  5. "'Lesson two,' said Peri, and ruled a line, and kept walking." — Part 2 / VOICE §2 "People say what they mean": compressed to a heading the reader has to decode. Replacement: "'Lesson two,' said Peri, ruling a line under the first one and writing it at the top of the next page, and kept walking."

  6. Em-dashes: four in 1,368 words (~2.9/1000) against a ~2/1000 budget; all Edwin's, two of them the parenthetical in the terms speech. Rewriting finding 18 removes that pair and brings the scene inside budget.

The device a second round would be about: the epigram density. Across 1,368 words the scene carries "a whole answer would be less trouble than half of one", "a pool grows by one means only", "an empty pool is a miserable thing to walk around with", "the ceiling stays where it stopped being tested", "every day is the part that costs", "a teacher who can't explain it hasn't understood it" and "you can't empty a pool through a hole that size" — a mana lecture built out of portable sentences, one of which has been handed to Peri, who does not make them.

What it would take: keep two — the canon sentence "a pool grows by being emptied" and one of his — and convert the rest into the plain mechanism or a fact with a number on it (findings 19, 22, 25 do most of this); the teaching paragraph then has a single quotable line in it and the scene stops sounding like a chapter of maxims.