Read mode

Read mode is the return half of the loop. Most of the time you do not ask for it directly — you send the photos of your marked-up pages, and the agent takes it from there — though you can also ask for it directly with /switchback read.

What you say

Just the photos: paths, or pasted images. Nothing else is required, though if more than one workbook could match (“which sitting are these from?”) the agent asks rather than guessing.

What you get

One report, in a fixed order:

1. The photo test — what came through clearly, what did not, and where the agent was tempted to guess and chose not to.
2. Your blue (Ask) questions, in number order — answered before anything else.
3. Page feedback — anything you noted about the page itself, rather than about your problem, kept in its own table so it never gets mistaken for content.
4. The content — your decisions, your ideas, the reds still open, the crossed-out items kept visible, quoting your own words wherever they carry the weight.
5. The next step — another round, a hold, or, for a proof, the action queue built from your marks.

Two files get written for you: W<n>.readback.md holds the report, and carry.md tracks what should follow you into the next sitting — open objections, answered questions, anything crossed out but worth remembering.

What the agent does with your marks

The cover’s ink swatches (the boxes you coloured with your own pens) are read first, as the ground truth for which colour means which role on that particular print. A stroke lighter than the rest of the page is read as pencil — provisional, not yet trusted. Struck-out words stay struck out; the agent does not try to recover what you meant to erase, and an illegible word is quoted as illegible and asked about rather than guessed.

If one of your questions needs an outside source rather than recall, it may be handed to a research step that runs in the background while the rest of your report comes back immediately.

Common ways this goes wrong

Photos taken at an angle, in poor light, or with a colour that could be mistaken for another (blue and purple, red and orange) can make a mark ambiguous. When that happens on something that matters, the agent asks for one re-shoot of that page rather than guessing which role you meant.