THE TWO-PASS CHECKLIST
One confession log, run twice on every draft. Pre-flight before you write,
post-flight after the draft exists. Run both or the slop walks right past.


PRE-FLIGHT (before a word exists)
Load the spec, then walk this specific piece. Five answers, thirty seconds.

[ ] 1. PASTE THE WHOLE LOG into the model's working memory so it carries your
       refusals into the draft instead of inventing fresh slop.

[ ] 2. WHAT TYPE IS IT?
       A field note is not a sales page is not a eulogy. Name it. A model
       that does not know the type defaults to the blandest one in the pile.

[ ] 3. EMOTIONAL REGISTER.
       Dark, furious, funny, paranoid, flat. Pick one and name it. No chosen
       register lands on neutral, and neutral is the center with the lights
       dimmed.

[ ] 4. WHERE PROFANITY LANDS.
       The budget is set in the log. Now say where in THIS piece it goes off,
       if it goes off at all. Per-piece decision, not a blanket setting.

[ ] 5. THE SHAPE OF THE ENDING.
       Decide where the prose is driving before it starts driving. No
       destination means a wandering draft, and a wandering draft is one the
       model is steering.

[ ] 6. WHICH METAPHOR SYSTEM.
       Name the domain on purpose. Biology, the garage, the late shift,
       anywhere but the default creator-economy well everybody drinks from.


POST-FLIGHT (after the draft exists)
Run the audit against the spec, line by line. Forget the vibe check. Go
drawer by drawer with a flashlight.

[ ] 1. BANNED WORDS.
       Did any make it in? Match the draft against Drawer 1, one entry at a
       time.

[ ] 2. BANNED SENTENCE SHAPES.
       Did the mirrored "this is not X, this is Y" move sneak past in a fresh
       disguise? Scan for the shape, not just the words.

[ ] 3. BANNED OPENERS.
       Did an opener you swore off show up at the top anyway?

[ ] 4. REPETITION SWEEP.
       Turn the model into your repetition detector. Ask where you repeat
       words, ideas, and sentence shapes. Then YOU decide which repeats are
       deliberate rhythm and which are the crutch.

[ ] 5. VAGUE SWEEP.
       Tell the model to mark every sentence that sounds smart and says
       nothing. It is fluent in corporate sludge because it makes so much of
       it. Replace the empty calories with something only you could write.

[ ] 6. STRUCTURE X-RAY.
       Ask the model to crush the whole piece down to three sentences. If the
       summary surprises you, your structure is lying about where the heart
       is. Move it to the front.


THE LOOP THAT KEEPS IT SHARP

  Anything that slipped through in post-flight goes BACK INTO THE LOG. You do
  not just fix it in this draft and move on. Write the catch down. Now the
  next piece loads it in pre-flight and the model is forbidden from reaching
  for it before it starts. The catch you make once becomes a catch the system
  makes automatically, every draft, from now on.

  The list grows or your prose stays smooth. You decide which one by whether
  you bother to write the catch down.


THE ONE THING THE MACHINE CANNOT DO

  The model is fast and tireless and it will hand you a corpse with a straight
  face. It cannot tell a living draft from a dead one. You can. That cold
  feeling when the sentences are all the same length and the rhythm is flat
  as a hospital monitor is data. Bring that taste to both ends of the draft.
  The log is how it stops being a feeling you had once and becomes a rule the
  system enforces forever.