Merge step (b): carry in local-only files at original paths

Brings 47 local-only files from backup-local-main into the merge-upstream
branch at their pre-rename paths. Subsequent steps will rename these to
the ce-* convention and port shared-file merges.

Includes:
- Custom skills: john-voice, jira-ticket-writer, hugo-blog-publisher,
  weekly-shipped, proof-push, ship-it, story-lens, sync-confluence,
  excalidraw-png-export, python-package-writer, fastapi-style,
  upstream-merge
- Custom agents: design-conformance-reviewer, tiangolo-fastapi-reviewer,
  zip-agent-validator, python-package-readme-writer, lint
- Custom commands: essay-edit, essay-outline, pr-comments-to-todos,
  resolve_todo_parallel, workflows/{plan,review,work}
- Local mods to ce-review/SKILL.md + review-output-template.md (will be
  ported to ce-code-review in a later step)

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

plugins/compound-engineering/skills/story-lens/references/saunders-framework.md

@@ -0,0 +1,75 @@
+# The Saunders Storytelling Framework
+
+A distillation of George Saunders's craft principles for evaluating whether prose constitutes a high-quality story.
+
+---
+
+## The Fundamental Unit: The Beat
+
+Every moment in a story is a beat. Each beat must *cause* the next beat. Saunders calls causality "what melody is to a songwriter" — it's the invisible connective tissue the audience feels as the story's logic.
+
+The test: are beats **causal** or merely **sequential**?
+
+- Sequential (anecdote): "this happened, then this happened"
+- Causal (story): "this happened, *therefore* this happened"
+
+If beats are merely sequential, the work reads as anecdote, not story.
+
+---
+
+## What Transforms Anecdote into Story: Escalation
+
+> "Always be escalating. That's all a story is, really: a continual system of escalation. A swath of prose earns its place in the story to the extent that it contributes to our sense that the story is still escalating."
+
+Escalation isn't just raising stakes — it's **irrevocable change**. Once a story has moved forward through some fundamental change in a character's condition, you don't get to enact that change again, and you don't get to stay there elaborating on that state.
+
+**The story is a staircase, not a treadmill.**
+
+---
+
+## The "Is This a Story Yet?" Diagnostic
+
+Stop at any point and ask: *if it ended here, would it be complete?*
+
+Early on, the answer is almost always no — because nothing has changed yet. The story only becomes a story at the moment something changes irreversibly.
+
+**Precise test: change = story. No change = still just setup.**
+
+---
+
+## The "What Do We Know About This Character So Far?" Tool
+
+Take inventory constantly. A reader's understanding of a character is always a running accumulation — and every beat should either **confirm**, **complicate**, or **overturn** that understanding.
+
+The more we know about a person — their hopes, dreams, fears, and failures — the more compassionate we become toward them. This is how the empathy machine operates mechanically: **specificity accrues, and accrued specificity generates care.**
+
+---
+
+## The Three E's
+
+Three words that capture the full framework:
+
+1. **Escalation** — the story must continuously move forward through irrevocable change
+2. **Efficiency** — ruthlessly exclude anything extraneous to the story's purposes
+3. **Expectation** — what comes next must hit a Goldilocks level: not too obvious, not too absurd
+
+---
+
+## The Moral/Technical Unity
+
+Any story that suffers from what seems like a **moral failing** will, with sufficient analytical attention, be found to be suffering from a **technical failing** — and if that failing is addressed, it will always become a better story.
+
+This means: when a story feels wrong emotionally or ethically, look for the craft problem first. The fix is almost always structural.
+
+---
+
+## Summary: The Diagnostic Questions
+
+Apply these in order to any piece of prose:
+
+1. **Beat causality** — Does each beat cause the next, or are they merely sequential?
+2. **Escalation** — Is the story continuously moving up the staircase, or running on a treadmill?
+3. **Story-yet test** — If it ended here, would something have irreversibly changed?
+4. **Character accumulation** — Is our understanding of the character growing richer with each beat?
+5. **Three E's check** — Is it escalating, efficient, and pitched at the right level of expectation?
+6. **Moral/technical unity** — If something feels off morally or emotionally, where is the technical failure?