Name the reader-calibration drift in prose doctrine

Accessibility guidance erodes on its own because the error is asymmetric:
writing above a reader reads as respect, writing below them reads as
condescension. Unchecked, the level only climbs, and each pass inherits the
previous pass's ceiling.

The drift is undetectable from inside. Prose is legible to precisely the
reader it was tuned for, and it was tuned for whoever wrote it, so rereading
cannot find it. The failure is also silent for the reader who suffers it: a
newcomer understands every sentence while nothing accumulates, which produces
no complaint and therefore no correcting signal.

Records the consequence that a fact audit cannot catch: over-calibration
compresses rather than omits, so the context is present but expandable only by
someone who already holds it.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

AGENTS.md

@@ -36,3 +36,11 @@
 - Lore canon lives in claims, relationships, chronology, links, and ownership. Existing sentences are replaceable projections; preserve canon through a fact audit, not by protecting wording.
 - Accept prose only after full-page reading for voice, rhythm, specificity, continuity, and trust in the reader. Pattern counts can locate pressure but cannot demonstrate quality.
 - Commit `15863a7` is rejected prose evidence. Its sentence-local substitutions reduced surface markers while preserving viewpoint chorus, repeated frames, explanatory cadence, and authorial distance. Do not use its replacement passages as positive examples.
+
+## Reader calibration
+
+- Calibration drifts upward across passes and never downward, because writing above a reader reads as respect and writing below them reads as condescension. Each pass inherits the last one's ceiling. Assume drift is happening rather than waiting for a reader to report it.
+- Prose is legible to precisely the reader it was tuned for, which is whoever wrote it. Rereading cannot detect over-calibration; only a read without authorial context can. Perform the full-page read as someone arriving cold, with no knowledge of the pass that produced the page.
+- Completeness is not legibility. A breach compresses rather than omits: an argument folded into a named term is fully present and expandable only by someone who already holds it. Ask whether context is stated or merely named.
+- Restatement after an abstraction is error correction, not padding. Cutting it feels like tightening and removes the reader's recovery path.
+- The failure is silent. A newcomer understands every sentence while nothing accumulates, and names that feel weighty to us stay inert for them. That produces no complaint, so absence of complaint is not evidence.