Presentation QA Mascots 031: Read-First Review of 4 Records

Maintenance ID: 0.1.00201.mascots-031 Date: 2026-10-08 Scope: content/mascots/ — the 4 records assigned by workload issue #758 (305.peatworthy-abstention-clerk.md, 306.scopekeeper-emeritus.md, 307.chairwoman-deferred-change.md, 308.sister-casserole-of-relief.md)

What changed

• Read all 4 assigned records in full, frontmatter through final residue line, including Haiku Log and Limerick Log regions. All matched the issue snapshot (8997eebee2a4e620c5dd47fcea97abf515c4cac6) exactly; no intervening diffs.
• 305.peatworthy-abstention-clerk.md line 21: bolded "never presuming to cast a binding vote for the departed" — the closing clause of the Distinction field; the limit that separates the Clerk's benevolent quorum-keeping from the Proxy-Vote Phantom's invented opinions. Asterisks only.
• 306.scopekeeper-emeritus.md line 21: bolded "formally misfiles operational messiness outside the scope boundary" — the verb phrase in the Function field where "certifies" is revealed as misfiling; the record's definitional pivot. Asterisks only.
• 307.chairwoman-deferred-change.md line 18: bolded "making scheduled exceptions appear more dire than they actually were" — the Function field's closing clause, where delay ritual turns into falsification of the incident record. Asterisks only.
• 308.sister-casserole-of-relief.md line 25: bolded "She does not lie exactly." — the thesis sentence of the record's three-paragraph preamble, repeated verbatim as an aphorism at line 62; the pivot on which the whole ledger-credit conceit turns. Asterisks only.

What was deliberately left alone

• All frontmatter, canonical IDs, tags, titles, {#...} anchors, headings, quoted material, and every existing emphasis marker (*Proxy-Vote Phantom* in 305; *Audit Apparition* and *exclusion* in 306; *dignity* in 307).
• The mascot stat-block convention: ### <record title> {#...-N} headings inside ## Aphorisms/## Haiku Log/## Limerick Log, repeated ## Haikus {#haikus-N} headings per source group, and the five-blank-line seam before the residue limerick tranche (305 line 347, 306 line 170, 307 line 293, 308 line 556). Consistent within each record and across all four assigned records — a recurring generator convention in this collection, not drift introduced here.
• All verse: every non-stanza-final line in Haiku Log and Limerick Log regions already carries two-space hard breaks; verified programmatically. Stanza-final lines are presentation-inert either way. No hard break was added, removed, or normalized (#824 protected region).
• Intentional duplicates across sibling records: "Nothing was resolved. The record now looks official." (306/307), "The form remained intact. The situation did not." (306/307/308), "Meaning adjusted around the winning selector." (306/307/308). Residue, not error.

Verification performed

• git diff review of all four records: exactly four single-line hunks, asterisk additions only; zero word, order, whitespace, or frontmatter changes.
• Read-only whitespace audit (awk/grep): zero prose run-on lines outside frontmatter in all four records; every verse line that needs a hard break has one.
• python3 scripts/check_collection_counts.py — PASS ("collection counts and README totals match Markdown source").
• BORIS_BIN=/Users/tbuddy/dev/filed.fyi/bin/boris ./bin/validate_graph.sh — passed.
• Compiled-article inspection of dist/cantilever/mascots/M-0305.html through M-0308.html: each shows exactly one <strong> at the intended pivot clause; verse <br> structure, stanza boundaries, and {#...} anchors unchanged.

Unresolved follow-up

• None raised by this batch. The mascot ## Haiku Log / ## Limerick Log regions remain outside the scope of scripts/fix_verse_hard_breaks.py (noted in 0.1.00065.mascots-001); no record here needed that fix.