TheLadder/tools/story-to-pack/probe/lorimer

Lorimer reference set and advice-book pilot: Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son (1902)

A hand-made reference set for the story-to-pack pipeline, a sibling of the Jacobs set in ../jacobs/ and the Lawson set in ../lawson/. It is also the first advice book the pipeline has read, so it carries a pilot the story sets do not. The pilot asks whether an advice book can supply options for the catalogue's situations and justify their effect directions from the text. Stories supply that part of a pack weakly.

Claude read every scene and wrote each summary, predicament, advice item, group and option. No inference of any kind was used. Do not treat it as ground truth: it is one careful reading.

File	What it is
corpus/letters-from-a-self-made-merchant.txt	Project Gutenberg text, eBook #21959 (public domain)
split_gutenberg.py	→ stories.json (20 letters, each titled by its contents synopsis) and chunks.json (186 scenes, same paragraph rule as ../chunk.py). 48,101 words
dump.py	python3 dump.py A B prints scenes A..B for reading
claude/batches/sNN.json	per letter: {chunk, story, summary, predicament, advice}. advice is a list of {move, outcome, quote, stance}
claude/groups_src.py	the groups, options and per-letter standing of the son
claude/options_src.py	the pilot: each advice item mapped to a catalogue v2 entry or a proposed new one, with its moves and the stated judgement
claude/build.py	checks everything, then writes claude/records.json, claude/groups.json and claude/options_by_entry.json, and prints the pilot numbers
claude/build.log	that printout, as last run
claude/page.py	→ claude/REFERENCE.html, the readable page: groups, scenes with their advice, and the pilot by entry

Rebuild: python3 split_gutenberg.py && cd claude && python3 build.py > build.log && python3 page.py.

build.py checks the following. Every scene appears once, in order. Every predicament is one sentence of 12 to 26 words. Every quote appears verbatim in its scene (whitespace aside) and runs to 30 words at most. No scene sits in two groups. Every group has 3 to 5 options and spans at least three letters, and no letter supplies more than half of any group's members. Every move is a spine path with a direction. Every pilot option points at a real advice item, and no item is used twice. Every options_by_entry.json key is a catalogue v2 id or a defined new: entry.

What is in it

• 186 predicaments, one sentence each (median 19 words, 15 to 23), written to the redescribe.py rules: no names, jobs, places or story-only objects. Packer, drummer, clerk and broker become generic roles: someone at work, a seller, a superior, a person with a little to stake. The topic_words leak check flags 25 of 186. 22 are for role words kept on purpose (partner, customer, newcomer, employer, rival, manager, owner, employee, author). Two are for "judge" used as a verb, and one is for "court" in scene 160, also a verb ("court one person after another"). One place word, "office", was caught and rewritten.
• Advice: 202 items in 127 scenes (87 do, 115 avoid). Each item has a generic move, what the text says the move leads to, and a verbatim quote of at most 30 words. Only advice the text gives is recorded. Two items give a move with no consequence at all (133, 166), and their outcome reads not stated. 52 book scenes carry none: the anecdotes' middles, where the father is telling the story and not yet drawing the lesson.
• 18 groups, each a situation that recurs in three or more letters (13 span 3 and 5 span 4). Every group has 4 to 8 scenes, and no letter supplies more than half of any group, so all pass the Lawson recurrence rule except that two groups (G07, G17) have only 4 scenes. 106 scenes are assigned and 80 are not, and 7 of the 80 are not the book (see Known defects). All 20 letters feed at least one group.
• Options: 90 in all, 5 per group. 81 cite the book's own advice (advice:N) and 9 cite what someone in a scene did (scene:N). There are no archetypes and no filled gaps: the book had a move for every slot. 9 options cite a scene outside their own group, and groups.json marks each one in_group: false. Most of these are advice given in one letter that answers a situation grouped from another.
• Moves: spine paths with a direction only (+, -, risk, set). Relationships are moved 65 times, money 39, standing 29, the skills 32 and flags 15. The roles are the ones a workplace has: boss, staff, peers, customer, rival, partner, family, friend, and schemer for the man with a sure thing. other_side is used where one side's gain is the other's loss.
• Skills proposed for this corpus: judgment, the sizing up of goods, prices, claims and men (the father's "one-part talk and nine-parts judgment"), and hustle, the drive to do the second half of the work. Jacobs' cunning and Lawson's grit do not fit. Lorimer's people are rarely scheming or enduring. They are either sizing things up or not trying hard enough.
• Stage comes from the son's standing, judged per letter, in STANDING in groups_src.py. Letters 1 to 9 are low (student, then mailing and billing clerk), 10 to 14 middle (travelling salesman) and 15 to 20 high (assistant manager, the top of this book's ladder). The groups come out 11 low, 4 middle and 3 high. The son is staged even when a scene is an anecdote about someone else, because the letter is written to him at that rung. This is the first corpus whose protagonist climbs a ladder, so stage carries real information. It is uneven all the same: the advice about money and effort is given early, and the advice about managing people late.

How this corpus differs

It is not fiction. Each "story" is a letter: a paragraph of maxims, then an anecdote, then the moral, and often a second anecdote. The anecdotes are one-off tales (a quack's button-hook trick, a pet pig, an heir engaged to three girls at once), so their middles recur nowhere and account for most of the unassigned scenes. The heir's tangle in Letter 19 fills 12 scenes, and none of them joins a group. The situations that recur are the maxims', and they recur because the father returns to his themes across the whole year of letters.

It is the game's premise. Earlier corpora needed their situations translated into work. This one is about work already: starting at the bottom, doing just enough, a hard boss, spending ahead of pay, selling to a buyer who does not want it, managing people, and the pull of the fast set. It has almost nothing about danger, the supernatural, crime or grief, which fill much of the catalogue.

It speaks from the top. The father owns the firm, so much of his advice is an employer's: whom to hire, when to fire, how to read a clerk. For a player climbing the ladder, some of it has to be turned round ("the owner passes over the one who comes in late" becomes the option come in late). The new entry in_charge, 17 options, is advice for the rung the player reaches last.

Pilot result

The question: can an advice book supply options for the catalogue's existing situations, and justify their effect directions from the text?

Coverage.

• 127 of 186 scenes carry advice, or 127 of the 179 that are the book. There are 202 advice items, and every one became an option.
• 24 of the 82 catalogue v2 entries receive at least one sourced option, 73 options in all: pretence 11, power_over_you 7, mistook_them 5, overlooked 5, newcomer 4, not_who_they_seem 4, sure_thing 4, called_to_account 3, family_against_your_path 3, plea_for_help 3, self_betrayal 3, and 1 or 2 each for after_your_money, bow_for_your_living, caught_out, compromise_for_money, cover_up_spiral, gone_missing, habit, outside_looking_in, outmatched, owning_up, peace_at_home, used and warning.
• 129 options (64%) fit no existing entry and sit under 19 new: entries. The biggest are in_charge 17, just_enough 15, difficult_customer 11, fast_set 9, sizing_up_a_match 9, learning_that_pays 8 and between_two_sides 7. The full list is in options_by_entry.json under _new_entries. Most are the work and money situations that the fiction-built catalogue never needed. Twelve of them are the same situations as groups found here (spending_ahead is G01, just_enough G03, in_charge G12, and so on). spending_ahead also sits beside the two debt groups Lawson reported as new.

The share with stated: true. stated is true only when the quoted words say what the move leads to, for every direction in moves. The rules applied are in options_src.py: an outcome in the next sentence does not count, and "it pays" or "a safe rule" with no path named does not count. The moves were written first, as a pack author would want them, and no direction was dropped to make an option count as stated.

	options	stated	share
On existing catalogue entries	73	29	40%
On new: entries	129	53	41%
All	202	82	41%

16 of the 24 covered entries have at least one stated option, and all 19 new ones do. Two patterns hold across the set:

• Warnings state their cost; recommendations mostly do not. 47% of avoid items are stated (54 of 115), against 32% of do items (28 of 87). "He'd punch my bank account as full of holes" names a path. "It pays" and "that's what counts" do not.
• The text rarely justifies more than one path. 54% of one-path options are stated (60 of 111), against 25% of two-path options (22 of 88) and none of the three three-path options. A typical sentence names one consequence, so an option that moves money and the boss's regard usually has one direction sourced and one inferred.

Against the story packs. Every option in a story pack has an inferred direction. A scene shows what someone did, and sometimes what happened to that one person, never what the move generally leads to. So their stated share is effectively 0.

Pack	options	scene:N	archetype	filled	stated
Lawson, While the Billy Boils	142	118	12	12	~0%
Bierce	128	96	15	17	~0%
Lorimer, pilot	202	(advice)	0	0	41%
Lorimer, groups	90	9 + 81 advice:N	0	0	not scored

Verdict: yes, run it on other advice books, but as a second source beside the stories, not in place of them. It did what the stories cannot. Two options in five come with a textual warrant for every direction, and every option comes from a move the text itself recommends or warns against. The groups needed no archetype or filled option at all. It did not do what the pilot mainly hoped for, which was to fill the existing catalogue. Only 24 of 82 entries got anything, and two thirds of the advice went to situations the catalogue lacks. That is less a failure than a finding: the story-built catalogue is thin on exactly the situations a career game runs on, and an advice book supplies those situations along with their options. Pick advice books whose subject is the game's (work, money, standing, getting on with people) and expect them to extend the catalogue as much as to feed it.

What went wrong or was hard.

• The 30-word quote cap splits move from outcome. Lorimer often states the move in one sentence and the consequence in the next, or lets an anecdote end a scene later. Several items had to be cut to a quote that holds the outcome and not the move, or the move and not the outcome. The strict rule, where the evidence must carry the outcome, cost the stated share several points. Allowing two short quotes per option would raise it honestly.
• Figurative language. The father speaks in hogs, mules, hams and horse races. Deciding whether "it's bankruptcy to tell about them" moves money (no) or "they'll bite" moves money (yes) is a judgement on every item. The stated share rests on those calls, and a second reader would move some.
• Stated is not the same as right. A stated direction is the father's claim, argued from one anecdote or none. The pilot measures whether the text gives a warrant, not whether the warrant holds.
• Mostly one side of each situation. The advice comes from the man at the top. Turning it into options for a climber is routine but constant work. Some entries, in_charge above all, fit a late stage only.
• The anecdotes are not advice. 52 book scenes are anecdote with no lesson yet. As story material they recur nowhere, so this book yields fewer grouped scenes per word than Lawson.

Known defects

• Scenes 179 to 185 are the publisher's back-matter advertisements, left inside Letter 20 by split_gutenberg.py. They are recorded with a "No situation" predicament and no advice, and are unassigned. The split was not changed, so chunks.json stays the corpus as split. A production splitter should cut at the last letter's sign-off.
• Scenes 7, 24, 31, 38, 62, 70, 99, 107, 118, 125, 147, 157 and 171 end with the next letter's boxed heading (the Gutenberg text's framed synopsis). They are harmless to reading but inflate those scenes' word counts.
• G07 and G17 have only 4 scenes. They pass this set's rule (three letters, none over half) but not the catalogue's recurrence rule of at least 5 scenes.
• The stated judgements and the entry mapping are one reader's. Some mappings stretch an entry. The Widow's "wait until you know" is filed under gone_missing, and Old Abe the Judas steer under used. Each is recorded, not rounded.