Analyze Chapter

Skill: analyze-chapter

What it does. Analyzes one chapter for AI markers and produces a structured _analysis.md covering 14 categories, with a verdict and revision priorities.

Triggers

• "analyze chapter X.Y"
• "/analyze-chapter X.Y"
• "check chapter X.Y for AI tics"
• Equivalent phrasing in the project's output language

Input. Path to the chapter.

Output. {chapter}_analysis.md, at the location set in .project/config/project.yaml → paths.analyses — next to the chapter, or centralized in .project/reports/technical/. That field is the single source of truth for this choice.

"Next to the chapter" resolves through paths.layout: the manuscript root under flat, the chapter's own directory under chapter. The two fields are independent axes and every combination is legal — see .project/templates/layout.md.

Drafting scaffolding is not prose. ## scene headers, HTML comment notes, and budget lines are excluded from word counts and from every density figure. Their absence is never a finding — a chapter written straight through is a choice, not a defect. See manuscript/README.md → Scene headers while drafting.

Write the analysis in the project's output language (config/project.yaml → language), not in English.

Execution protocol

Step 1 — Load context

Read, in this order:

1. .project/config/project.yaml — output language, paths.analyses, total density ceiling
2. .project/templates/framework.md — the 14 categories, signals, counting rules, default ceilings
3. .project/config/style-guide.md — project overrides to the ceilings, and any language adaptation
4. .project/config/persona.md — author signatures that are not tics
5. .project/reports/preserve-list.md — phrases that must never be flagged
6. .project/reports/recurrences.md — cross-chapter duplications
7. .project/templates/chapter-analysis.md — output skeleton

Step 2 — Read the chapter and count its words

Read it in full. Do not skim, do not summarize mentally — the analysis depends on literal quotation.

Count the chapter's prose words before analyzing anything and record the figure in the header. Every density number derives from it, so it must be one number used consistently. Exclude title, epigraphs, and any analysis scaffolding; include dialogue.

Step 3 — Sweep by category

For each of the 14 categories:

a) Scan for the signals listed in the framework, in the project's language.

b) For every occurrence:

• Quote the exact text. Never paraphrase.
• Check persona.md → if the construction is a declared signature, do not flag it and do not count it.
• Check preserve-list.md → if listed, mark (PRESERVE — thesis) with a note on its narrative weight, and do not count it.
• Check recurrences.md → if it appears elsewhere, mark (RECURRENCE — also in ch. X, Y) plus the decision. Counted, and prioritized in the verdict.
• Otherwise → suggest a concrete treatment from the framework.

c) Compute the density: (occurrences / word count) × 1000, one decimal. Categories 8, 9, and 13 use their own units — per-word per-1k, exchanges per chapter, and % of the book's chapters respectively.

d) Compare against the ceiling — the style-guide.md override if one exists, otherwise the framework default. The cut target is the number of occurrences that must go to land under it.

e) After all categories: sum the per-1k ones into the chapter total and compare against project.yaml → density_ceiling_total.

Step 4 — Section 15: other tics

Capture what does not fit categories 1–14: caps lock, misplaced references, invented proverbs, recurring personification, internal dialogue between "parts of me", recycled phrases.

Step 5 — Verdict

a) Top 5–8 priorities, ordered by impact:

• Objective grammatical errors → immediate top
• Literal cross-chapter recurrences → always top 3
• Categories furthest above their ceiling, weighted by scene importance → top 5
• Tics breaking rhythm at pivotal moments → top 5

b) Keep intact (thesis) — every (PRESERVE) phrase found in this chapter.

c) Estimated revision time — in hours.

d) Target feeling — one sentence on what the chapter should convey once revised.

Step 6 — Write output

Follow .project/templates/chapter-analysis.md.

Step 7 — Report back

Return: chapter word count, chapter density (N,N/1k) against the total ceiling, which categories are over, top 3 priorities, file path, time estimate.

Critical rules

1. Quotes are always literal. For long sentences: opening + [...] + closing.

2. Do not inflate. Empty category → write "No relevant occurrences in this chapter." Never invent findings to fill a section.

3. Persona overrides framework. If the author declared a construction as their signature, it is not a tic. Always respect this.

4. Thesis overrides tic. A phrase in preserve-list.md goes to "Keep intact", never to a cut suggestion.

5. Recurrence overrides generic suggestion. If it is in recurrences.md, mark it as a recurrence.

6. Never generate R: annotations. The author writes those under each item afterwards.

7. Honest density. A clean chapter deserves the truth: "3,1/1k, under every ceiling. Tonal model." Do not hunt for tics that are not there.

8. Count, never estimate. Density figures come from an actual count against an actual word count. A guessed number breaks every downstream comparison — review-revision's before/after, review-book's trajectory, consolidate-style's ceiling proposals. If a category is genuinely hard to count (7 and 8 often are), say what you counted and how.

9. Surgical tone. This is a working document, not literature.

10. Output language. Write the entire analysis in the project's output language.

Special case: already-analyzed chapter

If an _analysis.md with R: annotations exists, do not overwrite. Ask the user:

• Full re-analysis (discards annotations)
• Diff analysis (compares versions, focuses on what changed)
• Cancel

Special case: clean chapter

Chapter total under the ceiling, no category over → short verdict: top 3 small adjustments, longer "keep intact" list, 15–45 min estimate, target feeling "model chapter, micro-adjustments only". Also flag it as a persona.md §8 model-passage candidate.

After the analysis

Suggest next steps:

• Other chapters in the same Act not yet analyzed
• If this was the last chapter of an Act → run scan-recurrences
• If new thesis-candidate phrases appeared → suggest adding them to preserve-list.md