diff --git a/scripts/tarbuckle-invoke.py b/scripts/tarbuckle-invoke.py
index 27a2303..46cb02f 100755
--- a/scripts/tarbuckle-invoke.py
+++ b/scripts/tarbuckle-invoke.py
@@ -116,7 +116,20 @@ def main() -> int:
     ok, why = acceptable(line, max_words=MAX_WORDS_INVOKED, one_line=False)
     if not ok:
         log_silence(why, line)
-        return 0                       # silence, never a repaired line — even here
+        # ⚠ THE LINE IS STILL WITHHELD — silence-on-violation is not relaxed, and the
+        # rejected text is never printed. But the INSTRUMENT reports its own state.
+        #
+        # Earned 2026-08-25, minutes after this surface shipped: the steward called him
+        # by name and got nothing at all, with no way to tell "he said nothing" from
+        # "the machinery ate it". On the unasked surfaces silence IS the design, because
+        # nobody asked. HERE SOMEONE ASKED. Constitutional Constraint 4 — the system
+        # must report its own limits; silent failures are architectural violations —
+        # and a named invocation returning bare silence is exactly that.
+        #
+        # stderr, so his voice keeps stdout to itself.
+        print(f"(called; nothing passed the net — {why}. logged, not shown.)",
+              file=sys.stderr)
+        return 0
     print(line)
     return 0
 
@@ -177,6 +190,20 @@ def selftest() -> int:
        "nothing more was said" in build_prompt("S", "M", ""))
 
     # I4 — silence on violation survives here too.
+    # I5 — the asked/unasked distinction, executable.
+    ck("I5 the rejected line is still withheld",
+       "logged, not shown" in src and source_lacks(__file__, "print(line", ")  # rejected"))
+    # ⚠ NEEDLE ASSEMBLED, for the fourth time today. A control that reads a corpus
+    # containing the control cannot write its needle as a literal — here the literal
+    # would have been counted alongside the code it was counting. source_lacks() covers
+    # ABSENCE checks; this is a proximity check, and the same rule governs it.
+    _n = "nothing passed " + "the net"
+    ck("I5 the instrument reports its own state", _n in src)
+    ck("I5n the note goes to stderr, never stdout",
+       "file=sys.stderr" in src[src.index(_n): src.index(_n) + 120])
+    ck("I5nn the proximity predicate can fail",
+       "file=sys.stderr" not in src[src.index(_n): src.index(_n) + 5])
+
     ck("I4 violation path is silence, not repair",
        "log_silence(why, line)" in src and source_lacks(__file__, "def ", "repair("))