Reader Cold Read

Reader Cold-Read

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.

When to use

• After any build_v3.py run that changed a chapter's publication form.
• Before a v3 chapter is declared publication-ready / sent to typesetting.
• When re-checking a chapter whose prior HARD findings were supposed to be fixed (fix lands in v2 → rebuild v3 → re-read).
• On demand whenever someone wants a cold read of a specific chapter.

This is the chapter-level read. For the whole-book continuous read (cross-chapter coherence, repetition fatigue, arc legibility), use /reader-experience-sweep.

The two principles (non-negotiable)

Read cold

Read ONLY book/chapters-v3/<n>-<slug>.md — the publication form. Do NOT open the brief, the case files, the source ledger, the rules, the registries, or prior audit memos. If you know what the chapter is supposed to do, you are no longer a reader.

Report, never fix

Say what happened to you as a reader. Never propose the edit. "I got lost" — not "add a transition." The crew owns the fix.

Procedure

1. Announce the cold read. State the exact file path you are reading and confirm you have consulted no briefs, rules, or registries.

2. Read once, straight through. Read the chapter as a reader would — start to finish, no skipping, no cross-referencing. Form your impressions as you go.

3. Walk the seven axes. For each, record findings with location (section heading, paragraph, or quoted phrase) and severity:

   • Comprehension — Where did you get lost? Which term/name/concept was used before you could grasp it? Any ambiguous referent ("this," "the latter," "the former")? Was a concept relied on before it was introduced? Where would a metaphor or analogy have helped you understand?
   • Engagement — Where would you have stopped reading (put-down point)? Did the first paragraph make you want the second? Any long flat stretch with no payoff? Did any phrase, case, or point repeat until you tired of it?
   • Recognition — At the chapter's turn, did you arrive at the recognition yourself, or were you told? Was the fair clue catchable on first read but not over-obvious? Did the reversal feel earned, or did you object "you haven't shown me that"?
   • Orientation — Could you say which of the four taxonomy categories you were in? Did you know where you were in the book's build? Did a callback ("as we saw with X") trigger recognition or a blank?
   • Trust — Did each load-bearing claim feel supported when it was made (not only in the endnote)? Did the author feel fair, or thumb-on-scale? Did the hedging read as scrupulous or evasive?
   • Takeaway — Could you explain the chapter's diagnostic to a friend afterward? Do you remember the pattern or just a scene? Can you complete "now I can recognize ___ when ___"?
   • Mechanics — Did a footnote or citation interrupt you? Did a subheading spoil what was coming? Any ugly URL, unreadable sentence, or a recognition that needs the eye (italics, layout) and would be lost on an audiobook listener?

4. Name the clean axes. Explicitly list axes where you had no findings. A clean read is a real result, not an absence of effort.

5. Tag severity. HARD blocks v3 publication promotion (you got lost; stopped reading; disbelieved a claim at the moment made; recognition delivered not earned; couldn't complete the takeaway; concept used before graspable). SOFT is a documented tradeoff.

6. Write the report to process/reader-reports/<n>-<slug>-<ISO-date>.md using the schema below.

Report schema

Owner: the reader
Task: Cold-read <n>-<slug> publication form
Inputs reviewed: book/chapters-v3/<n>-<slug>.md (cold; no briefs/rules/registries)
Output: this report

## Verdict
<CLEAN — no HARD findings | BLOCKED — N HARD findings>

## Findings (HARD) — block v3 publication until resolved or xaiolai-overridden
- [axis] location — what happened to me as a reader (no fix proposed)

## Findings (SOFT) — documented tradeoffs
- [axis] location — what happened

## Clean axes
<list of the seven axes with no findings>

Evidence grade: N/A (experiential report)
Assumptions: <e.g., read as a first-time reader of the whole book; or as someone who has read prior chapters>
Open questions: <ambiguities you couldn't resolve as a reader>
Risks: <which HARD findings, if unresolved, leave a reader-hostile chapter in the shipped book>
Handoff: <Wayne for prose-level; Bonnie for structural; Jerry for triage>

What this skill is NOT

• Not fair-clue-audit (structural plant/payoff check against the callback graph) — you have no graph; you only have whether the clue worked on you.
• Not cognitive-arc-audit (verifies discriminations against cognitive-arc.yml) — you have no registry; you only have whether you could follow.
• Not Laura's red-team (adversary attacking the argument) — you are not attacking; you are experiencing.
• Not a rule-12 values audit (judges the artifact against named values V1–V10) — you judge nothing against a spec; you report what reading did to you.

The spec-based audits check the artifact. You check the experience of consuming it. Both are needed; neither substitutes for the other.

Example