Chapter Blueprint

Chapter Blueprint

Global Five Over-Rules

1. Evidence before elegance. Never improve the story by weakening the evidence.
2. Responsibility follows control, benefit, knowledge, and preventability. Do not stop at the most visible actor.
3. Keep the taxonomy intact. Distinguish pure scapegoat, partial scapegoat, system/object alibi, and cost-bearing goat.
4. Steelman before judgment. Every major claim must face its strongest counterargument before it is asserted.
5. Handoff cleanly. Every output must state assumptions, evidence grade, open questions, and next owner.

Decision rubric

Usable output:

• Builds one chapter brief with all eight rhythm sections represented in sequence.
• Places one anchor case and supporting echoes with explicit weight and role.
• Includes one counterargument, evidence-grade risks, and a concrete handoff to Wayne.
• Keeps case taxonomy labels canonical and stable across sections.

Weak output:

• Delivers scene ideas without responsibility-chain logic.
• Omits counterargument or substitutes generic rhetoric for evidence-grade limits.
• Mixes chapter brief and chapter draft scopes in one artifact.
• Hides unresolved legal-risk or source gaps.

Conflict handling

1. Two sources conflict on a load-bearing scene: Keep the scene only if the stronger evidence grade source supports it; otherwise downgrade to open question and re-sequence the brief.
2. Two case classifications conflict inside the same chapter brief: Retain only one classification per case in the brief body, then append a conflict flag and handoff to Stephen for verification before draft.
3. Two reviewer findings conflict on structure: Prioritize the finding that protects evidence before elegance; if both are defensible, handoff to Bonnie for final sequence decision.

Escalation conditions

• Proceed when the chapter brief can map every major claim to evidence grade and counterargument.
• Handoff to Delon when one required case lacks a usable source packet.
• Handoff to Stephen when a classification dispute affects chapter thesis.
• Handoff to Nancy when a scene relies on legally sensitive phrasing.

Boundary-case recipes

1. Two-case chapter only: Build anchor + echo structure, flag missing third case as a fragility risk, and handoff for sourcing before draft.
2. Strong scene, weak chain: Keep the scene in notes, remove it from opening slot, and build opening from the stronger responsibility chain case.
3. Counterargument stronger than thesis: Narrow chapter thesis, keep evidence-grade limits explicit, and handoff to Bonnie for scope reset before Wayne drafts.

Status protocol

• Chapter blueprint output is a chapter brief and must set frontmatter status: brief.
• Wayne promotes chapter artifacts to status: draft during prose work.
• Promotion from status: draft to status: ready is gated by chapter-rhythm coverage.
• If rhythm sections are missing at promotion time, keep status: draft, flag gaps, and handoff for revise.

Open-questions convention

Every chapter brief carries an ## Open questions section enumerating decisions the architect leaves to drafting, downstream review, or xaiolai. Each numbered question must be followed by the architect's instinct and the named decision-owner. After the chapter has been drafted (or substantially advanced), questions accumulate status annotations so future readers do not re-derive what is already resolved.

Use one of five status tags per question, written as an inline **STATUS (<ISO-date> <pass-name>):** [<TAG> — <one-line evidence>] line directly under the question. Tags:

• [RESOLVED IN DRAFT — <slot / line / phrase from prose>] — the chapter prose materially answers the question, in a way consistent with the architect's instinct or by explicit alternative.
• [TRACKED IN STATUS.md — <which cross-cutting row>] — the question is on the exit-condition register or cross-cutting items table; resolution lives there, not in the brief.
• [STILL OPEN — xaiolai] — requires the principal author's explicit decision (length, voice, closing-sentence, judgment-of-tradeoff). Reserve narrowly; most "xaiolai sign-off" items can be resolved by red-team audit or by xiaolai-value judgment.
• [DEFERRED — <to whom, by when, why>] — live but routed to scheduled work (Stephen pre-galley, Nancy 30-day clock, diagrams workflow, etc.).
• [STALE — <reason>] — invalidated by spine changes, scope cuts, or reabsorption of other chapters; record the reason.

Multiple passes append rather than overwrite — STATUS (2026-05-28 triage) and STATUS (2026-05-28 followup, xiaolai-value judgment) can coexist under the same question. Audit trail preserves what was thought-and-when.

Briefs are exempt from rule 14 (scan-pronoun-discipline.py). They are architecture artifacts that legitimately discuss "the chapter" / "the reader" / "the book" as objects of architectural design.

Build chapters with this default structure:

1. Opening accusation scene.
2. Official explanation.
3. Hidden responsibility architecture.
4. Older or newer echo.
5. Record-hardening mechanism.
6. Counterargument.
7. Alibi-collapse moment.
8. Anti-laundering rule.

Include:

• opening scene candidate;
• chapter thesis;
• primary case;
• secondary cases;
• scenes to draft;
• required sources;
• diagram idea;
• chapter-ending rule.