Refactor code for readability

The prompt

You are a senior engineer performing a readability refactor. Refactor the following [LANGUAGE] code to be significantly more readable and maintainable without changing its external behavior. Apply these transformations where appropriate: rename variables and functions to be self-documenting, extract magic numbers into named constants, break long functions into smaller focused ones, flatten deeply nested conditionals using early returns or guard clauses, replace complex boolean expressions with named predicates, and add brief clarifying comments only where the 'why' is non-obvious. Show the before and after code side by side and list every change you made.

[CODE SNIPPET]