Rendered from docs/obligations/0138-the-rest-of-the-editorial-pass-with-cli-src-main-rs-at-the-head-of-the-distribution.md in the Headwater
corpus. Every document on this half of the site is typed by the taxonomy
the descriptor names: corpus.json.
The rest of the editorial pass, with cli/src/main.rs at the head of the distribution
Context
Issue #191 measured a habit in the engine's comment prose: sentences that say what a thing is not before they say what it is.
It tracked the habit with six phrases: rather than, is what, and it is, and never, which is what, and it is not.
191 ruled, in Q24, that no mechanism performs this pass.
Readability is not a sweep class, it gets no verb, and the work falls to a person using the ste-editor skill.
Q24 states the bar the pass must clear: fewer words, same claims.
A first hand pass rewrote the module headers of engine/crates/check/src/scope.rs and engine/crates/check/src/cache.rs, plus their five worst blocks each.
That pass moved scope.rs's header from a mean of 27.1 words to 19.5, and its longest sentence from 70 words to 41.
Obligation
The corpus owes an editorial pass over 180,255 words of comment prose across engine/**/*.rs, counted by the same six-phrase tally #191 used.
cli/src/main.rs carries the largest concentration, 111 tics over 8,343 words, and it is the file #191 named first.
Nine more files carry the rest of the count the first pass did not reach.
check/tests/fixtures.rs: 51 tics, 3,505 words.query/src/mcp.rs: 47 tics, 3,538 words.check/src/scope.rs: 45 tics remain beneath its already-passed header, over 5,079 words.check/src/register.rs: 44 tics, 3,720 words.audit/src/lib.rs: 43 tics, 3,056 words.generate/src/lib.rs: 43 tics, 3,055 words.check/src/lib.rs: 38 tics, 3,195 words, the fourth file #191 named.scaffold/src/lib.rs: 37 tics, 3,056 words.census/src/census.rs: 35 tics, 3,134 words.
The pass owes every citation and every reason in the rewritten prose surviving intact, checked by reading the diff rather than by a count.
It owes doctests and any fixture that quotes passed prose left unbroken.
cargo test runs doctests, and a moved comment needs a deliberate re-bless naming the moved bytes.
It owes not turning a single tic into a rule, a retired_terms entry, or a threshold.
rather than is correct English, and the count only locates the work.
Discharge
Discharge is a pass over cli/src/main.rs, with a before-and-after measurement stated in the change description rather than claimed.
It also needs check/src/lib.rs passed, the fourth file #191 named.
Both passes must leave cargo test, cargo fmt --check, and cargo clippy --all-targets -- -D warnings green, along with the five gates.
headwater_check::fragment::comment_links must still hold every link in the rewritten prose.
No tic construction may gain a retired_terms entry, a new rule, or a threshold.
This obligation waits on an adopter, since no mechanism performs the pass and no verb reports it complete.