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

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

Two things the caller asked confirmed

"Because I'm going to tell people this number" now carries its reason in the same speech ("before I tell anybody anything, I want to know the number isn't my thumb slipping on a tag") — the previous comment is answered. Nothing of the "It's the question." kind (a bare demonstrative verdict with no qualifier) appears anywhere in the scene.

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Part 1 — Does this sentence make sense?

"But your arcs already run out at the north headland, and the far side of that redacted is Mr Sennet's grass" — Part 1, a fact overstated into a falsehood, and dependents of an edit. The scene has just established that the outer arc's leading edge is 9 chains 50 (209 yards) from the thorn stump on the north headland; the arcs therefore do not reach the headland, they are two hundred yards short of it, and the sentence contradicts the measurement the whole scene was built to take. This is also where redacted "two hundred days" passage stood: with it gone, the jump to Sennet's grass has no bridge and the remaining clause has swollen to fill the hole. Replacement: "But that stump on the north headland is two hundred yards from the edge of the outer arc, and at a yard a day that is about two hundred days. The far side of that redacted is Mr Sennet's grass, and nobody can say what a thing like this does under old grass without digging some. His ground, his leave. I'll ask him tomorrow."

"Then he moved both hands six inches closer together and stayed again, and again, until his thumbs nearly touched." / "I can bracket it to about a foot ... Under my right, at eighteen inches' distance" — Part 1, check every count. Eighteen inches closing by six three times ends with the thumbs together, which brackets the edge to nothing, not to a foot; and the speech then quotes eighteen inches, which was the starting separation and is no longer where either hand is. Replacement: "Then he moved both hands three inches closer together and stayed again, and again, until they were a foot apart, and stopped." and in the speech, "Under my right, a foot away, it is doing none of it."

"and came out again with the charcoal, and wrote the day's figure on the pantry door" — Part 1, check who was in the room / where a thing is. The pantry door is inside the house (sc. 31: she takes the lamp off its hook and leads them into the pantry) and the charcoal's ledge is beside it, so she cannot come out of the house and write on it. Replacement: "...and Mattie went straight on into the house without stopping, and they came in after her to the pantry and stood while she wrote the day's figure on the door under the other eleven, herself, in her own hand: the date, and 9 chains 50, and 48 the other way. Both wrote."

"so that the owners of the field could check him" — Part 1, check every count. One person owns the field; Tess and Burl are her daughter and her hired man. Replacement: "so that the woman who owned the field could check him."

"which he had told Peri the night before would be the first measurement of the day" — Part 1, viewpoint knowledge / dependents. In sc. 33 Peri is asleep before he does any of this: he writes the morning's order at two in the morning by candle, alone, and the only thing he told her in the kitchen was five. Replacement: "which he had put at the head of the list he wrote at two in the morning."

"Hands were the last work of the morning, and the strangest to watch." — Part 1, viewpoint knowledge. Edwin is the viewpoint and the man with his hands in the soil; he cannot be the one finding it strange to watch. Replacement: "Hands were the last work of the morning. Burl stopped what he was doing to watch it, which Burl had not done for the chain."

"the best crop in the parish" — Part 1, viewpoint knowledge. He has been in Fenholt one night and has seen this field and the one over the redacted. Replacement: "the best crop he had seen since the Ashway" — or "better than anything over the redacted", which the sentence already goes on to say.

"because the first was long, hot work" — Part 1, check the clock. The first run finishes a little before seven in the morning in Cornmonth, with the sun twenty minutes over the horizon; nothing about it has been hot yet. Replacement: "because the first was long work".

"Two links, over two hundred yards and more of standing barley" — Part 1, a word doing a job it cannot do; "over" and "and more" do the same job twice and the reader stalls on which. Replacement: "Two links, over two hundred yards of standing barley, which was agreement."

"Then, for the first time since the strangers had come, she asked a question of her own about her own field." — Part 1, does the justification distinguish?, and check the count. The strangers came last night, which makes "for the first time" a claim about one evening; and in that evening she asked Peri "Is that all that goes down." Replacement: "Then she asked a question of her own, and it was not about the record."

"Tess, who milked at seven" vs "milks till seven" (minor.md) — Part 1, scale against canon. The two cannot both be true and the scene's version is the one that lets her stand at the gate at five; flagging so the canon line is corrected rather than the scene. No prose change wanted.

"Tess, who milked at seven and had negotiated hard for the interval" — Part 1, dependents / a cause left out. The interval she negotiated ends at seven, the morning's work plainly runs past it (an hour's run, a return run, and the hands), and she is never shown leaving. Add one clause where the hands begin: "Tess had gone down to the milking by then, having said she would and having been held to it."

"one either side of an invisible line" / "Mattie watched the invisible line run away through her barley" — Part 1, a reference with no antecedent, and Part 2. The narration names the line as a fact before Edwin has found it, and then has Mattie watch a thing it has just called invisible. Replacements: "one either side of where the arc's leading edge cut the chained line"; and "Mattie looked up the line toward the north headland, at the ground the two hands had just been talking about, with her arms folded, saying nothing, until Burl had the chain bagged."

"The other way, stump to post" — Part 1, the flat restatement cannot be produced. The figure is chained from the stump to the arc's leading edge, not from the stump to the post, so "stump to post" names a different and longer distance than the one being checked. Replacement: "The other way, from the edge back up to the stump, before anybody says one word about what it means."

"and you'll see why the order matters when you see the order" — Part 1, an explanation stops halfway ("a bit too in between explaining and not explaining"). Either name the mechanism or say nothing about it. Replacement: "controls first, because a revealing that comes up empty tells you nothing until you have watched the same spell come up full on ground you already know."

"Edwin knelt at the outer edge, found the leading edge of the arc with his hands" — Part 1, dependents: it spends the hands before the hands passage, which then reports the same act as the strange new thing. Replacement: "Edwin knelt at the outer edge, found where the arc's leading edge cut the line, and called the figure."

Part 2 — The gesture at meaning

"Days, then, and the truthful shape of it" — Part 2, banned family ("the shape of it", "the whole of it"). Replacement: "Days, then, and I'll say what days means:"

"Dew even across all of it" — Part 2, "[amount] of it" joins the banned family. Replacement: "Dew even across the field, arc and no arc, laid and lifted."

Part 3 — Would this exist in a real world?

No finding. Chain, tally-tags, charcoal on a door, six revealings, a corn factor's price and a grazier's leave are all this world's; the arithmetic (2.60 ch = 57 yd over eight weeks; 2.90 ch = 64 yd over nine) checks out at 22 yards to the chain.

Part 4 — Why would this character say this?

"A yard a day," said Mattie. "Both stretches." — Part 4, knowledge states / voice; mattie-ordish.md 3 bans a rate for her by name as Edwin's, and rules that a line of hers opening on a figure is in the wrong mouth. Replacement, same beat off her own ground: "Mattie looked from the stump down to the edge. 'It's come the same both times,' she said."

"A chain figure is mine and the door's. What they'll want is days to their own ground." — Part 4, voice; mattie-ordish.md 7a (antithesis) and 11 (her verbs take tools and ground, not abstractions — "a chain figure", "what they'll want" are Ferrin's objects). Replacement: "'When they ask you the number,' she said, 'is it chains, or days.' She kept hold of the charcoal. 'I chained it off my own gatepost. They've not got my gatepost. They'll want it in days to their own ground.'"

"He'll say no," said Mattie ... "and he'll have said it before you've finished asking." — Part 4, voice; this is the doubled insistence, which mattie-ordish.md 7c assigns to redacted by name and bans for Mattie, and it is also a reversal under 7a. It is redacted's shape, not hers. It also closes the scene as a resolving button (VOICE §2), which a plain verdict need not. Replacement, which keeps the refusal, gives her the rule-6b class dismissal the scene currently owes her, and still ends on her verdict: "'He'll say no,' said Mattie, and put the charcoal back on its ledge. 'Graziers do. Ask him at his own gate and not in the street, and he'll say it once and mean it.'"

"You keep saying tests," said Peri. — Part 4, nobody says a thing because the reader needs it. Her single line in the scene exists to cue Edwin's afternoon; it comes from the exposition's want, not hers. See the device note below for the replacement.

Part 5 — Is the device working?

Edwin's four composed teaching paragraphs (the why-twice speech; "That's what we know…"; the hands speech; "Days, then…") — Part 5 / edwin.md 6c, which licenses one per scene. The hands speech is the scene's discovery and the why-twice speech is its engine and carries the reason the author asked for; the other two are the ones to rebuild. Fix per Part 5's recitation that should be conversation: let "That's what we know" arrive as answers — Mattie asks what it means that both stretches came out the same, Tess asks whether he will tell the street, and he answers each — and let "Days, then…" be broken by Mattie after "days" so the Sennet half is her raising the redacted, not his lecture. No reason or answer is lost; they change mouths and order.

"Numbers first. All of them. Guesses afterwards, in writing, marked as guesses." — Part 5 / the aphorism budget, and Part 2's unwanted footnote. The two sentences before it already give the reason in full ("because I don't know, and a guess from me before the tests are run would follow this field around for years"); this is the portable restatement laid on top of a complete argument, and it is the most quotable thing in the scene. Cut — the reason above it stands untouched.

"A sick field shades off. A flooded field shades off. Everything shades off." — Part 5 / edwin.md 4: anaphora at a peak is a defect however good the line, and this is the peak of the scene. Replacement, content preserved and slightly elaborated: "Bad ground shades off at its edge. Sick ground, flooded ground, sour ground: it thins out over a yard or two and you can feel it going. This doesn't, and I have never once put my hands on ground that didn't, and the edge is what I'll be testing this afternoon."

Two contrastive pairs — "Two runs that agree within a couple of links are a measurement; one run isn't" and "most of their ground has years in it, not weeks" — Part 5 / edwin.md 13: one per scene. Keep the first (it is the scene's engine stated once); recast the second as the plain figure: "at a yard a day, most of their ground has years in it before anything reaches them, and I'll say so every time, with if nothing changes on the end of it."

"Both wrote." — Part 5 / VOICE §3, contamination. This is a phrase canon quotes verbatim from ch. 020 as Mattie's formula. Not a fault in itself, but it is old text arriving through a canon file; the main session should decide whether it is being originated here on purpose or mirrored.

Part 6 — Weak where it should be strong

"He stood, and brushed his hands, and Peri wrote for a long time, and Mattie watched…" — Part 6, prefer the participial form to a chain of "and"s in a physical beat. Replacement: "He stood, brushing his hands. Peri wrote for a long time. Mattie looked up the line toward the north headland…"

Em-dashes: four in 1,308 words against a budget of ~2.6. Part 6 / VOICE. The pair in the hands passage ("with these instruments" — he lifted the hands — ) is doing real work and should stay; the pair in the why-twice speech is punctuation. Replacement: "Because I'm going to tell people this number: your neighbours tonight, and some men fifty miles off by letter. And before I tell anybody anything, I want to know…"

"with if nothing changes attached" — Part 6, italics in a weird place. The italic marks a phrase inside speech that nobody has yet written down. Replacement: "and I'll say the words if nothing changes after it every time" if the italics are wanted for the door's sake later, otherwise plain roman.

"put his two hands flat into the soil" — Part 6, the plainer form. Into the soil means digging; he is laying them on ground under standing barley. Replacement: "put his two hands flat on the ground".

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redacted sentence: unpublished prose The rest-register is not the problem and must not be blamed for it: sc. 06 has no second person in it at all, whereas this scene puts five people in a field and gives one of them a job description. Her near-silence is not yet earned by the work, because the work here is not hers.

What it would take: one question of her own, in her own grammar — slightly too big, arriving at something nobody in the field had asked — placed where the two runs agree, which is the moment the scene has a fact and no future for it. Something on the order of "Then what we know is that it was a yard a day. Not that it is. When's the next one chained — is it a month, or is it when something changes?" — which lands Mattie's monthly protocol from Peri's side instead of Edwin's, gives Mattie something to answer off her own ground, and is her faculty (the wording of the question) rather than her pen. Canon also has her leaving the sword against the dairy wall unprompted for this walk (peri.md, Established, ch. 010); if the scene does not want that beat, the canon entry needs demoting, and if it does, it is a free half-sentence of her at the gate.