reader-experience-sweep

name

reader-experience-sweep

description

Cold-read the whole assembled manuscript (dist/manuscript-v3.md) in one continuous sitting AS A READER and report cross-chapter experience — repetition fatigue, arc legibility, callback recognition, cumulative-trust drift, taxonomy coherence across chapters. The book-level companion to reader-cold-read (which is per-chapter). Reports lived experience with HARD/SOFT severity; never fixes; reads only the manuscript. Used by the-reader agent. Output: process/reader-reports/sweep-<date>.md.

Reader Experience Sweep

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 all chapters have passed /reader-cold-read with zero HARD findings.
• Before xaiolai's final Gate B read.
• After any change that touches multiple chapters (a sweep-level rebuild, a cross-chapter motif or callback edit).

This is the whole-book read. The friction it finds is invisible at chapter level — it only appears when you read the book the way a reader does: in sequence, in fewer sittings, holding the cumulative argument in your head.

The two principles (non-negotiable)

Same as /reader-cold-read: read cold (only dist/manuscript-v3.md; no briefs, rules, registries) and report, never fix.

Procedure

1. Announce the cold read. State that you are reading the assembled manuscript only, no briefs/rules/registries.

2. Read in sequence. Read front-to-back as a reader who is building a cumulative understanding. You are allowed to remember earlier chapters (a real reader does); you are NOT allowed to consult the registries to check whether your memory is "correct" — your memory IS the data.

3. Walk the five cross-chapter axes:

   • Arc legibility — Does the book feel like it is building, or like a list of cases? At the end, can you state the through-line? Did any chapter feel out of place in the sequence?
   • Repetition fatigue — Which phrases, framings, or cases recurred until you tired of them? (The book caps "responsibility laundering" at once per chapter — but what about the uncapped repetitions: the eight questions, "the chain climbs," the four categories, recurring cases like MH17 / Therac-25 / Boeing?) Did a recurrence feel like a useful callback or like the author repeating themselves?
   • Callback recognition — When a chapter said "as we saw with X," did you actually recognize X, or had you forgotten it? Did any callback assume you remembered a detail you didn't?
   • Cumulative trust — Across the whole book, did the author stay fair, or did a pattern of selection emerge that made you suspect a thumb on the scale (e.g., every villain from one side; every sympathetic figure from another)? Did trust build or erode chapter over chapter?
   • Cumulative taxonomy coherence — Were the four categories applied consistently across chapters, or did the same kind of case get sorted differently in different chapters in a way that confused you?

4. Also note book-level engagement: Where, across the whole arc, would a reader put the book down and not pick it up again? Which chapter was the slog? Which was the peak?

5. Tag severity. HARD (blocks the book's publication-ready promotion): the arc was illegible (you couldn't state the through-line); a pattern of unfairness eroded your trust in the author; a load-bearing callback failed across the book; the taxonomy felt incoherent across chapters. SOFT: mild fatigue, a slow chapter, a callback you had to think about.

6. Write the report to process/reader-reports/sweep-<ISO-date>.md.

Report schema

Owner: the reader
Task: Cold-read the assembled manuscript end-to-end
Inputs reviewed: dist/manuscript-v3.md (cold; no briefs/rules/registries)
Output: this report

## Verdict
<CLEAN | BLOCKED — N HARD findings>

## The through-line, in my words
<one paragraph: what the book argued, as a reader who just finished it. If you can't write this, that is itself a HARD finding on arc legibility.>

## Findings (HARD)
- [axis] location/chapter-span — what happened to me across the book

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

## Book-level engagement map
- Peak chapter(s):
- Slog chapter(s):
- Put-down risk points:

## Clean axes
<cross-chapter axes with no findings>

Evidence grade: N/A (experiential report)
Assumptions: <read in N sittings; read as first encounter with the whole book>
Open questions:
Risks: <which HARD findings leave a reader-hostile book if unresolved>
Handoff: <Bonnie for arc/structure; Wayne for prose-level repetition; Jerry for triage>

Example

Context: all 13 chapters cleared /reader-cold-read; sweep before Gate B. input: /reader-experience-sweep output: Reads only dist/manuscript-v3.md. Through-line written cleanly (arc legible). Verdict: BLOCKED — 1 HARD. HARD [repetition fatigue] chs 7–12 — "the eight questions were walked in full at least four more times after chapter 3 installed them; by chapter 9 I was skimming the walk because I already knew the moves." SOFT [callback] ch-11 — "'as we saw with the Post Office' assumed I remembered the five-role conflation precisely; I remembered the gist, not the five." Engagement: peak ch-2 and ch-10; slog ch-8 (densest); put-down risk at the ch-6 administrative-law middle. Handoff: Bonnie (decide whether the eight-question walk should compress after its third full appearance) + Jerry (triage).