diff --git a/docs/active-work.md b/docs/active-work.md
index 5cc98a0..2f542bc 100644
--- a/docs/active-work.md
+++ b/docs/active-work.md
@@ -330,16 +330,17 @@ from #171 and #215.
   *exclusions* — is corrected there: nothing outside the gate has ever
   reproduced this, so matching one gate condition at a time outside it
   cannot isolate an in-gate cause. In-gate is 2 failures in 4;
-  out-of-gate is 0 in 17 — **and a fourth in-gate run, this lane's
-  final verification gate, was also green, so the cumulative figure is
-  2 in 4**. Recorded in the registry; **not this lane's to solve**.
-- **PR #244** — https://github.com/levineuwirth/pmacs/pull/244, opened
-  at head **`2d76984`**, which is exactly the head the gate ran on.
-- **GATE GREEN, head-exact**: all 8 stages, log
-  `20260829T152824Z-673477`, with `HEAD` and a clean worktree captured
-  before and after. Zero `FAILED` lines and zero non-zero-failure
-  result lines across all eight stage logs, read from them rather than
-  inferred from stage exits.
+  out-of-gate is 0 in 17, over a **bounded observation window** the
+  registry defines so the ratio cannot drift with review activity.
+  Recorded there; **not this lane's to solve**.
+- **PR #244** — https://github.com/levineuwirth/pmacs/pull/244.
+- **Every review round ends with a head-exact 8-stage gate**, green
+  each time, with `HEAD` and a clean worktree captured before and after
+  and the result read from the eight stage logs rather than inferred
+  from stage exits. **The PR body carries the current head and log
+  id**; they are not duplicated here, because a docs commit answering a
+  review moves both, and a ledger line naming them is stale the moment
+  it is written — the lesson §5b learned twice.
 - **Still owed, separately:** `workflow_dispatch` on `ci.yml`, and U9's
   discriminating control — pin test-binary concurrency to 1, then load
   a lone `--lib` binary — which has been named since 2026-08-09 and
diff --git a/docs/ci-red-signatures.md b/docs/ci-red-signatures.md
index 5445593..7d8a315 100644
--- a/docs/ci-red-signatures.md
+++ b/docs/ci-red-signatures.md
@@ -561,12 +561,18 @@ isolate an in-gate cause. All these runs establish is that none of the
 four conditions **by itself** reproduces the failure. They do not show
 that any of them is uninvolved when the gate supplies the rest.
 
-**What the observations actually support**, stated at the strength they
-carry: in-gate is **2 failures in 4 runs** — the failing pair, then two
-greens, the second of which is this lane's final head-exact
-verification gate (`20260829T152824Z-673477`) — while out-of-gate is
-**0 failures in 17**. That asymmetry is suggestive and it is not a
-clean split,
+**THE OBSERVATION WINDOW IS BOUNDED, deliberately.** It is the four
+in-gate runs of 2026-08-29 up to and including the first green —
+`20260829T144541Z`, `T150011Z`, `T152024Z`, `T152824Z` — plus the 17
+out-of-gate runs taken between them. **Later head-exact verification
+gates on this lane are NOT part of it and do not move these numbers.**
+Without that boundary the tally re-counts itself every time a review
+round adds a docs commit and the gate is re-run, which is a ratio that
+drifts with review activity rather than with the phenomenon.
+
+**What the window supports**, at the strength it carries: in-gate
+**2 failures in 4**; out-of-gate **0 failures in 17**. That asymmetry
+is suggestive and it is not a clean split,
 because the third in-gate run passed.
 
 **The method for the next occurrence follows from that.** Varying