2026-09-02
User:
Editing task in redacted. Read draft/book-01/VOICE.md in full first (binding: plain modern English, no em dashes in body text, prose at rest, people say their reasons; never cut a reason). Then read draft/book-01/scenes/101-.md through 118-.md (eighteen scenes). Do not read chapters/, rewrite/, draft/book-01/rejected-act2/, summaries/, plans/book-01/arc-0*.md unpublished or their git history.
Two mechanical convergences to thin, scene by scene, with the smallest edits:
'because': count per scene first. Convert enough instances that every scene ends under four per thousand words (112 is at ten, 110 at six, 114/118/108/107/102 at five). Keep every reason; change the joint (full stop, colon, 'so', 'since', participle, juxtaposition). Keep 'because' where a character is answering 'why' aloud.
The write-verb tic: 'wrote it', 'write that', 'write it', 'I've written', 'I've entered', 'wrote that down' as paragraph-ending beats. Count per scene. Where the writing is a decision (an entry with a name against it, a struck line, the facing page in 104, Peri's roster in 116) it stays. Where it is a period at the end of a paragraph or a caption on a line of dialogue, cut it or replace it with the physical act or nothing. In particular Peri must not have redacted's 'I've written that' tic: leave redacted's, thin Peri's. Do not change any scene's last sentence (the endings were just settled).
Also: in 103, the six-fold anaphora 'It went off at... It went off over... It went off at... It went off, hard... And it went off... And it did not go off' — keep the list of places, break the anaphora so at most two sentences open the same way.
Edit the files directly with minimal diffs (one paragraph per line; preserve line structure; never introduce an em dash; never 'I'll not'/'I'd not' in first person; no weekday names; no 'nought'). Then run
python3 tools/overlap_check.py draft/book-01/scenes/1[01]*.mdfrom the repo root and rephrase any 8+ word run in text you changed (verbatim System boxes in brackets are exempt). Report per-scene counts before and after for both items and four representative before/after sentences.
I'll start by reading the binding voice memo and the scenes.
🔧 Read draft/book-01/VOICE.md
✅ 272 lines, 17188 chars
🔧 Bash: ls redacted/draft/book-01/scenes/ | head -60
✅ 60 lines, 1467 chars
🔧 Bash: cd redacted/draft/book-01/scenes && for f in 1[01][0-8]-*.md; do w=$(wc -w < $f); b=$(g…
✅ 18 lines, 1153 chars — 100-the-sending-book.md unpublished words= 1174 because= 3 per1k=2.6 / 101-of-this-college.md unpublished words= 945 because= 4 per1k=4.2 / 102-plot-fourteen.md unpublished words= 1157 because= 6 per1k=5.2
🔧 Bash: cd redacted/draft/book-01/scenes && grep -n -i 'because' 101-*.md 102-*.md 106-*.md 107…
✅ 52 lines, 19414 chars
🔧 Bash: cd redacted/draft/book-01/scenes && grep -n -E "wrote it|write that|write it|I've writt…
✅ 41 lines, 10205 chars
🔧 Bash: cd redacted/draft/book-01/scenes && grep -n -E "(wrote it|write that|write it|written i…
✅ 3 lines, 322 chars
🔧 Bash: cd redacted/draft/book-01/scenes && for f in 101-*.md 102-*.md 103-*.md 104-*.md 105-*.…
✅ 19 lines, 1618 chars
🔧 Read redacted: private
✅ 243 lines, 39463 chars
🔧 Bash: cd redacted/draft/book-01/scenes && for f in 107-*.md 108-*.md 109-*.md 110-*.md 111-*.…
✅ 19 lines, 1864 chars
🔧 Read redacted: private
✅ 271 lines, 39919 chars
🔧 Bash: cd redacted/draft/book-01/scenes && for f in 113-*.md 114-*.md 115-*.md 116-*.md 117-*.…
✅ 1 lines, 116 chars
🔧 Read redacted: private
✅ 261 lines, 41564 chars
Now applying the edits, scene by scene.
🔧 Bash: cd redacted/draft/book-01/scenes && grep -o 'because[^.,;"]*' 106-*.md; echo ---; grep…
✅ 11 lines, 525 chars
🔧 Bash: cd redacted/draft/book-01/scenes && python3 - <<'PY' import io,sys def ed(f, pairs):…
✅ 3 lines, 128 chars — Exit code 1 / ok 101-of-this-college.md unpublished / FAIL 102-plot-fourteen.md unpublished redacted sentence: unpublished prose
🔧 Bash: cd redacted/draft/book-01/scenes && python3 - <<'PY' import sys def ed(f, pairs): p…
✅ 8 lines, 211 chars — ok 102-plot-fourteen.md unpublished / ok 103-the-wrong-place.md unpublished / ok 104-ground-that-doesnt-answer.md unpublished
🔧 Bash: cd redacted/draft/book-01/scenes && python3 - <<'PY' import sys def ed(f, pairs): p…
✅ 6 lines, 137 chars — ok 112-seen-and-not-read.md unpublished / ok 113-taught-to-five.md unpublished / ok 114-the-redacted-off.md
🔧 Bash: cd redacted/draft/book-01/scenes && python3 -c " p='117-the-redacted.md';s=open(p).re…
✅ 7 lines, 593 chars
🔧 Bash: cd redacted/draft/book-01/scenes && sed -n '43,45p' 117-the-redacted.md; echo "-----"…
✅ 22 lines, 1547 chars
🔧 Bash: python3 tools/overlap_check.py draft/book-01/scenes/1[01]*.md 2>&1 | tail -40
✅ 40 lines, 5093 chars
🔧 Bash: git add -A draft/book-01/scenes && git commit -q -F - <<'EOF' Act-three scenes 101-118: t…
✅ 1 lines, 66 chars — b524122 Act-three scenes 101-118: thin two mechanical convergences
Done and committed (b524122).
because per thousand words| scene | before | after |
|---|---|---|
| 101 | 4 / 4.2 | 3 / 3.18 |
| 102 | 6 / 5.2 | 4 / 3.47 |
| 103 | 4 / 3.1 | 4 / 3.08 |
| 104 | 3 / 2.1 | 3 / 2.14 |
| 105 | 3 / 2.2 | 3 / 2.19 |
| 106 | 4 / 4.3 | 3 / 3.18 |
| 107 | 7 / 5.2 | 5 / 3.70 |
| 108 | 6 / 5.5 | 4 / 3.65 |
| 109 | 3 / 2.5 | 3 / 2.46 |
| 110 | 7 / 6.4 | 4 / 3.68 |
| 111 | 4 / 2.7 | 4 / 2.73 |
| 112 | 9 / 10.4 | 3 / 3.47 |
| 113 | 5 / 3.5 | 5 / 3.48 |
| 114 | 4 / 4.0 | 3 / 2.99 |
| 115 | 8 / 5.3 | 5 / 3.33 |
| 116 | 2 / 1.7 | 2 / 1.68 |
| 117 | 7 / 4.5 | 6 / 3.89 |
| 118 | 5 / 5.1 | 3 / 3.08 |
Every scene now under four per thousand. redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted ... split off).
101 0→0 · 102 2→1 · 103 2→2 (both decisions) · 104 3→2 · 105 4→2 · 106 1→0 · 107 0→0 · 108 0→0 · 110 0→0 (all decisions) · 112 2→2 (redacted's + the untouched last sentence) · 113 1→0 · 114 2→2 (redacted's struck line) · 115 0→0 · 116 2→2 (roster, kept per brief) · 117 2→1 · 118 0→0.
Peri no longer carries redacted's I've written that / I've entered construction anywhere: 106's standalone "I've written it." became a physical act, 117's became Her pencil had not stopped. redacted's own instances (106, 112, 114, 116) are untouched. No scene's last sentence was changed.
redacted sentence: unpublished prose
python3 tools/overlap_check.py draft/book-01/scenes/1[01]*.md: zero 8+ word runs in 16 of the 18 scenes. The two hits are pre-existing and in text I did not touch — 111's three bracketed Weave lines (verbatim box, exempt) and three short runs in 115's redacted paragraph. Nothing I changed produced a new run. No em dashes, no I'll not/I'd not in first person, no weekday names, no nought introduced.
One thing outside the brief, flagged not fixed: two pre-existing first-person I'll not violations survive, at 112-seen-and-not-read.md unpublished line 29 (and I'll not ask either of you to— actually now removed as a side effect of thebecausesplit, so only one remains) and116-a-foot-under.md unpublished line 39 (and I'll not have that at redacted). The 116 one still needs a ruling or a fix.