diff --git a/PENDING.md b/PENDING.md
index 56b4001..bb5f617 100644
--- a/PENDING.md
+++ b/PENDING.md
@@ -3926,3 +3926,30 @@ Hooks already wired, for §13.6 planning: `SessionStart` ×2 (wake digest lives
 **§15b — action owed:** say explicitly in PENDING-89 that the buddy contributes zero by construction, and open the v1 Chamber archive read as its own `[PROPOSAL]`.
 
 **Awaiting:** (1) §6b provenance-commit disposition — **time-critical**; (2) `<DATE FILED>`; (3) unambiguous §5 ratification.
+
+### AMENDMENT 2 — 2026-08-22 — §4 steps 1–4 filed and pushed; the jurist's normalization condition discharged
+
+**Commit `acfbb9f`, pushed to both remotes (github + gitea), three days ahead of the beacon.**
+
+**⚖ JURIST RULING on §2a(b), 2026-08-22: NO VETO — the URL correction stands.** Reasons recorded verbatim in `seed/FOOL-SEED-RULE.md` §2a: the UNAVAILABILITY clause forbids substituting a different *timestamp, beacon, or source*, and none of the three changed — only the address at which the identical object is retrieved. The settling test: **could the correction have moved the outcome?** No; the pulse does not exist yet and does not depend on the URL. A substitution rule exists to prevent redraws, and a correction that cannot affect the draw is not one.
+
+**⚠ The uppercase finding is ruled the more serious of the two, and the assessment is adopted.** A silent seed divergence would have run clean, produced bones, and left nobody able to say afterwards which normalization had been applied. The URL failure at least announced itself. **Both were caught by the TESTING clause's historical dry run — the clause justified itself twice on its first use**, and that is now recorded in the rule rather than left to inference.
+
+### ✅ The pre-25th condition — DISCHARGED, and checking it found a defect in my own test
+
+Jurist: *"Confirm that lowercasing is applied at exactly one point in the code and is unit-tested against a known uppercase input. A normalization rule stated in prose and applied in two places is how the two diverge later."*
+
+**Single point confirmed:** `derive_fool.py:79`, the only `.lower()` / `.upper()` / `casefold` in the file. **Unit-tested**, four new checks including a **negative control** proving the test can fail. Selftest now **16/16**, no network, synthetic vectors plus one known uppercase vector.
+
+⚠ **The check found that the 2026-08-22 dry run had bypassed the step it was meant to verify.** The run lowercased outside the code and passed the value in already normalized, so the single normalization point was **never exercised on uppercase input in the only end-to-end run**. The test's subject was *the pipeline*; it silently excluded *the step under scrutiny*. Same wrong-subject shape as the `find`-vs-`glob` error and the three-store negative — **third instance this week, and the first found by another party naming the condition rather than by the executor re-checking.**
+
+**Re-run with the RAW uppercase value through the real path** (2024 pulse): seed `d8e5e74def52c7cd…`, identical to the pre-lowercased run. **Binding procedure added to the rule:** on the 25th the fetched `outputValue` is passed to `derive_fool.py` exactly as served — never normalized by any wrapper, shell step or hand edit before it reaches `derive()`.
+
+### Owed after the 25th, non-blocking, both accepted
+
+- **`[FIX]` 'abandonment' → 'retirement'** throughout the fool's doctrine — one word, one meaning; *abandonment* stays owned by §6 of the trial design. Deliberately deferred past the beacon so no edit touches the filed rule before it fires.
+- **The mumble-hook answer** — clock-governed, event-checked, residual burst sensitivity declared rather than claimed away; the daemon alternative **costed, not dismissed**. Build decision, not governance.
+
+**Still NOT done:** target pulse not fetched, no bones, no soul, `~/CLAUDE.md` untouched (PENDING-150), nothing built of §8/§8a/§9.
+
+**Awaiting:** nothing blocking. The next act is the beacon at 2026-08-25T12:00:00Z.
diff --git a/claude/governance/fool/seed/FOOL-SEED-RULE.md b/claude/governance/fool/seed/FOOL-SEED-RULE.md
index 904d10b..9b5239e 100644
--- a/claude/governance/fool/seed/FOOL-SEED-RULE.md
+++ b/claude/governance/fool/seed/FOOL-SEED-RULE.md
@@ -89,7 +89,25 @@ TESTING
   a near-future pulse.
 ```
 
-### 2a · ⚠ Two corrections to the v2 §6b block, marked rather than silent
+### 2a · ⚠ Two corrections to the v2 §6b block — RULED, no veto
+
+⚠ **JURIST RULING, 2026-08-22: no veto; the correction stands.** Recorded with its
+reasons, since it will be read later.
+
+> The UNAVAILABILITY clause forbids substituting a different **timestamp, beacon, or
+> source**. None of the three changed. Same beacon (NIST v2.0), same pulse
+> (2026-08-25T12:00:00Z, epoch-ms 1787659200000), same field. What changed is the
+> address at which the identical object is retrieved — the difference between a wrong
+> phone number and a different person.
+>
+> The test that settles it: **could this correction have moved the outcome?** No. The
+> pulse's value does not exist yet and does not depend on the URL used to fetch it. A
+> substitution rule exists to prevent redraws; a correction that cannot affect the draw
+> is not one. Read otherwise, the clause would forbid fixing a typo in a field name, and
+> would have guaranteed a stop on the 25th for a reason unrelated to entropy — the
+> opposite of what it protects.
+
+**The two corrections, marked rather than silent:**
 
 The draft said to commit its block verbatim. **Two values in it do not resolve**, and a
 rule that cannot be resolved on the day is not a rule (v2's own standard). Both changes
@@ -152,6 +170,16 @@ constantly; or produces gradeable in-genre findings despite §9.
 annoying, being ignored. *Those are the specification. Lear ignores his Fool for four
 acts and the Fool is not thereby broken.*
 
+## 4a · ⚠ The uppercase finding is the more serious of the two — jurist's assessment, adopted
+
+> `outputValue` served uppercase against a rule specifying lowercase is a **silent seed
+> divergence** — the pipeline would have run clean, produced bones, and nobody could have
+> said afterwards which normalization had been applied. That is worse than the URL
+> failure, which at least announced itself.
+
+**Both were caught by the TESTING clause's historical dry run. The clause justified
+itself twice on its first use**, and that is recorded here rather than left to inference.
+
 ## 5 · Implementation and its verification
 
 `derive_fool.py`, same directory. Deterministic, no cache, no reroll path, no salt. It
@@ -172,6 +200,52 @@ times out** in this environment. The fetch on the 25th must use curl.
 ⚠ **`outputValue` is served UPPERCASE** (128 hex chars). The rule's *"lowercased before
 use"* is therefore **load-bearing, not cosmetic** — omitting it yields a different seed.
 
+### 5a · Normalization — the jurist's pre-25th condition, DISCHARGED
+
+**Confirmed: lowercasing is applied at exactly ONE point** — `derive_fool.py:79`,
+`beacon_output_value.strip().lower()`, inside `derive()`. It is the only `.lower()`,
+`.upper()` or `casefold` in the file. Every downstream use, including the recorded
+`beacon_outputValue` field, reads from that single normalized value.
+
+**Unit-tested against a known uppercase input**, four checks, including one that proves
+the test can fail:
+
+| check | |
+|---|---|
+| UPPERCASE input normalizes: bones identical to lowercase | PASS |
+| UPPERCASE input matches an **independently computed** seed (not read back from `derive()`) | PASS |
+| the recorded beacon field is stored lowercased | PASS |
+| **NEGATIVE CONTROL:** un-normalized input *would* give a different seed | PASS |
+
+⚠ **Checking this found that the 2026-08-22 dry run had bypassed the step it was meant to
+verify.** The run lowercased the value *outside* the code (`ov.lower()` into a temp file)
+and passed it in already normalized, so the single normalization point was never
+exercised on an uppercase input in the only end-to-end run. **The test's subject was the
+pipeline; it silently excluded the step under scrutiny** — the same wrong-subject shape
+the record has been tracking all week.
+
+**Re-run with the RAW uppercase value through the real path**, 2024-01-01 pulse:
+seed `d8e5e74def52c7cd…`, identical to the pre-lowercased run. Normalization verified in
+the path that will actually be used.
+
+⚠ **PROCEDURE FOR THE 25th, binding:** the fetched `outputValue` is passed to
+`derive_fool.py` **exactly as served**. It is never lowercased, trimmed or otherwise
+normalized by any wrapper, shell step or hand edit before it reaches `derive()`. One
+normalization point, and it is in the code.
+
+## 5b · Owed after the 25th, non-blocking
+
+**`[FIX]` — 'abandonment' → 'retirement' throughout the fool's doctrine.** The jurist
+owns the mismatch (§4 step 3 says *abandonment*, §10 defines *RETIREMENT*) and rules that
+the fool's own doctrine should read **retirement**, one word with one meaning —
+*abandonment* is the word §6 of the trial design owns, with a specific sense about the
+jester form. Naming rather than silently harmonizing was correct; the harmonization is a
+`[FIX]` **after** the beacon, so no edit touches this rule before it fires.
+
+**The mumble-hook answer** (v2 §8) — clock-governed, event-checked, residual burst
+sensitivity declared rather than claimed away. The daemon alternative to be **costed, not
+dismissed**. A build decision, not a governance one. Also after the 25th.
+
 ## 6 · What has NOT happened
 
 - The target pulse has **not** been fetched. No near-future pulse has been fetched.
diff --git a/claude/governance/fool/seed/derive_fool.py b/claude/governance/fool/seed/derive_fool.py
index ed66c2c..3b204ac 100755
--- a/claude/governance/fool/seed/derive_fool.py
+++ b/claude/governance/fool/seed/derive_fool.py
@@ -122,6 +122,22 @@ def selftest() -> int:
         ("no floor: dump can reach the bottom of its range",
          min(derive(f"{i:0128x}")["stats"][derive(f"{i:0128x}")["dump"]] for i in range(200)) <= DUMP_RANGE[0] + 1),
     ]
+    # --- normalization: the jurist's pre-25th condition. outputValue is served UPPERCASE. ---
+    UP  = "A1B2C3D4E5F6" * 10 + "ABCDEFAB"          # 128 chars, uppercase hex
+    LOW = UP.lower()
+    r_up, r_low = derive(UP), derive(LOW)
+    # independent expectation, computed here rather than read back from derive()
+    import hashlib as _h
+    expected_seed = _h.sha256((PROVENANCE_SHA256 + LOW).encode()).hexdigest()
+    wrong_seed    = _h.sha256((PROVENANCE_SHA256 + UP ).encode()).hexdigest()
+    checks += [
+        ("UPPERCASE input normalizes: bones identical to lowercase", r_up == r_low),
+        ("UPPERCASE input matches independently computed seed",      r_up["seed"] == expected_seed),
+        ("recorded beacon field is stored lowercased",               r_up["beacon_outputValue"] == LOW),
+        ("NEGATIVE CONTROL: un-normalized input WOULD give a different seed "
+         "(so the check above can fail)",                            expected_seed != wrong_seed),
+    ]
+
     # positive control: the PRNG must actually move both peak and dump around the axes
     peaks = {derive(f"{i:0128x}")["peak"] for i in range(200)}
     dumps = {derive(f"{i:0128x}")["dump"] for i in range(200)}