A contract written before drafting, plus a mechanical pass run over the finished draft. It accepts the analysis page’s conclusion — a voice cannot be rendered without asserting things — and therefore aims at catching and triaging leaks, not preventing them. It is the same shape as the spatial ledger: consistency held in an external document, checked after the prose exists, because it cannot be done from memory while also writing.
Before drafting: the layer contract#
State, in or beside the spec the piece is written against:
- Layer 1 (facts): the given facts, each with the wiki page it comes from — plus the variables explicitly freed (the Dawn prompt’s “her role, history, and interior state are not fixed” is the model).
- Layer 2 (stance): for each of order, duration/frequency, person, tense, retrospective distance, and frame: pinned to a value, or free. An unmentioned dimension is a hole, not a constraint.
- Layer 3 (diction): free. This is the payload.
After drafting: the sweep#
Scan the draft for every mint — an assertion not traceable to a cited wiki page or a freed variable. The scannable categories, from the Dawn audit:
proper names · numbers with units · times and schedules · species · institutions and offices · landmarks · customs and practices · resident populations · in-world idioms presented as used by people · implied documents (epigraphs, reports, observances)
Then list the layer-2 choices the draft actually made and check them against the contract. Diction that mints a fact is a fact: “the hour-hand of the morning” goes on the layer-1 list, not the layer-3 one.
Triage#
Every layer-1 mint gets exactly one of three dispositions:
- Source it — it was in the wiki all along; add the citation to the ledger.
- Ratify it — it is good enough to keep, so it goes through the front door: wiki page, canon memory entry, and the ask-first gate for names, in the same session. After ratification it is a given, not a leak.
- Mark it — it stays in the rendering as texture but is recorded on the scene’s page as non-canon-bearing. Nothing may later cite the rendering for it.
Layer-2 breaches are spec business: fix the draft, or amend the contract if the freedom turns out to be wanted. Layer-3 observations are the experiment’s yield and belong in the voice spec’s characteristic-moves and failure-modes lists.
Two standing rules#
- Renderings derive from the spec, never from each other. A detail shared by several renderings has one origin and one attestation, however many voices repeat it.
- Demand profiles accumulate. When a voice’s mints cluster (KSR wants quantities, Martine wants institutions), record the cluster in the voice spec — it is the cost estimate for choosing that voice.