# Wharton reference: *The Descent of Man and Other Stories*

A hand-made comparison target for story-to-pack, the third alongside O. Henry (`../v2/claude/`)
and Jacobs (`../jacobs/`). Claude read every scene of Edith Wharton's 1904 collection and wrote
its summary and predicament. The recurring groups, a draft event per group, and a setting were
then written by hand. The local-inference pipeline can be run on the same `chunks.json` and set
beside it scene for scene.

It is a reference, not an answer key: a different careful reader would draw some group
boundaries differently. No inference host was used.

Open `claude/REFERENCE.html` in a browser to read it.

## Files

| File | What |
| --- | --- |
| `corpus/descent-of-man.txt` | Project Gutenberg #4519, plain text as downloaded 2026-09-17 |
| `split_gutenberg.py` | Splits the text into the ten stories and cuts ~320-word scenes, with the same rule as `../chunk.py` and `../jacobs/split_se.py` |
| `stories.json`, `chunks.json` | 10 stories, 262 scenes (median 285 words) |
| `dump.py` | `dump.py 0 28` prints scenes for reading |
| `claude/batches/s00-s09.json` | One file per story: `{chunk, story, summary, predicament}` per scene, the same shape as the sibling probes |
| `claude/summaries.json`, `claude/predicaments.json` | The same, in the `{"summaries": [{chunk, summary}]}` shape `embed.py`, `topic_share.py` and `groups_page.py` read. Written by `claude_export.py` |
| `claude/groups.json` | 16 recurring groups, each with its members, a one-sentence predicament and a tightness label |
| `claude/events.json` | One draft event per group: description variants citing their source scenes, and 3-4 options with effects as a path and a direction only |
| `claude/setting.json` | Stat-spine labels, roles, stages and a suggested player role |
| `claude/measure.log` | `claude_export.py` output: topic share of the hand groups, and word leakage in the predicaments |
| `claude_page.py` → `claude/REFERENCE.html` | The reading page |

## Rules followed

- **Predicament**, as SELECTION.md defines it: what the main person is up against and what they
  want, with no names, jobs, places or story-specific objects. Relationship words ("partner",
  "spouse", "rival") are kept, as the spec allows.
- **Group**: at least 3 of the 10 stories, and no story more than 50% of the members. O. Henry uses
  at least 4 of 97 stories and at most 40%; with only ten stories that bar would leave almost
  nothing. Each scene is in at most one group.
- **Options** follow the DESIGN.md recipe: fixed archetypes (18), options drawn from scenes (41),
  and options filled in where the corpus had none (2).
- **No numbers.** Effects give a path and a direction. Magnitudes are the numeric search's job.
- **Role tokens** (`{spouse}`, `{former}` …) are left in for code to substitute, because
  DESIGN.md found a small model should not do entity substitution.

## What came out

- **16 groups covering 129 of 262 scenes (49%).** 12 are tight (one predicament) and 4 are broad.
  Two (`own_words_back`, `owning_up`) read as climaxes rather than things that recur in a run,
  and are marked `recurs: false`.
- **A third of the options come from a scene next to a member, not from another member.** Of the
  41 options drawn from scenes, 17 came from outside their group. 13 of those 17 are within two
  scenes of a member in the same story: 8 come from the scene after, where the character acts, and
  5 from the scene before, which sets up what they are responding to. **A tool that draws options
  only from cluster members would miss about a third of these. It should also read the scene or
  two either side of each member.**
- **Topic share for the hand groups is 39%**, against the O. Henry baselines of 20% (summaries)
  and 13% (14B predicaments). This is not a fair like-for-like, since the corpus and the
  summariser differ, but the per-group list shows why it is high: `husband`, `wife` and
  `mother` top 9 of the 16 groups. Wharton's predicaments are domestic, so the relationship word
  *is* the predicament ("giving ground to keep the peace" needs a spouse). **The topic-share
  measure cannot tell a relationship that makes up a predicament from one that is only a topic.**
  On a corpus like this one, it would mark good groups as topic-bound.
- **Ten stories is below the design's 20-30.** Nine of the 16 groups sit exactly at the 50%
  ceiling. The corpus does recur (marriage, compromise, secrets, the past coming back), but
  thinly. A pack needs ~15 situations a stage, and this gives 16 in all, across two stages.

## Known defects

- Two Gutenberg epigraph lines were left inside scene text (scene 45 carries a stray line from
  scene 56, and scene 51 carries "Earth's Martyrs. By Stephen Phillips."). They are not removed,
  so that `chunks.json` stays the corpus as split.
- Scenes 0-6 and 237-239 are narration with little predicament. They were summarised anyway,
  and none of them is in a group.
- Two descriptions cite a scene one before their group's members (50, 122). This is recorded in
  `events.json`.