PENDING-169 §5a: the wrap seam's cost, filed against the 2026-09-08 obligation

/doctor surfaced it without being asked to look: tarbuckle-wrap.py is the
Stop hook, median 6.7s and max 13.6s over 6 recorded runs, on the blocking
path at every session end. SessionStart:startup — the wake digest, which
does considerably more — is 1.6s median over 50 runs, and PostToolUse:Bash
is 0ms. The wrap seam is an order of magnitude more expensive than
anything else in the setup.

Filed as a measurement against the existing dated obligation, not as a
proposal, and item 4's "nothing in the running system is touched before
the September revisit" is honoured. Steward's direction 2026-09-02: look
at it on 8 September with the rest of the Tarbuckle work.

Deliberately NO second DEFERRED-DECISION block: mumble-rate-two-week-report
already triggers on 2026-09-08, and a duplicate trigger for the same date
is noise in the instrument that exists to stop things being forgotten.

The limits travel with the number: it does not establish that 6.7s is
wrong — the seam calls a model, so seconds are the expected order — n=6 is
thin, and successful hook runs with empty output are never persisted, so
the recorded count is a floor on firing frequency rather than a census.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_017vKkg2EJF1rGwdFdBogwqx

PENDING.md

@@ -6390,7 +6390,13 @@ The four instances, all within seven days: the staleness case written **inside t
 
 **4 · Nothing in the running system is touched before the September revisit.** PENDING-166 and -167 are filed and deferred by this direction.
 
-**5 · Dated obligations, carried so they are not held in memory.** **2026-09-08:** the two-week report — the observed mumble rate (§8), the rejection log's deletion, and the agreed recital test at 2 above. Standing: the wrap seam, and `mute`/`off` available at all times (mute rate may be counted; muting is never a fault).
+**5 · Dated obligations, carried so they are not held in memory.** **2026-09-08:** the two-week report — the observed mumble rate (§8), the rejection log's deletion, the agreed recital test at 2 above, **and the wrap seam's cost (added 2026-09-02, below)**. Standing: the wrap seam, and `mute`/`off` available at all times (mute rate may be counted; muting is never a fault).
+
+**5a · ADDED 2026-09-02 — `tarbuckle-wrap.py` is the slowest thing in the setup, and it blocks every session end.** Surfaced by `/doctor`, not sought. Measured from transcript hook attachments over the scan window: **median 6.7 s, max 13.6 s, n = 6** `Stop` hook runs. For comparison, `SessionStart:startup` — the wake digest, which does far more — is **1.6 s median over 50 runs**, and `PostToolUse:Bash` is 0 ms. The wrap seam is an order of magnitude more expensive than any other hook in the system and it sits on the blocking path at every `Stop`.
+
+⚠ **Nothing is touched, per item 4** — this is a measurement filed against the existing 2026-09-08 obligation, not a proposal, and it deliberately adds **no second `DEFERRED-DECISION` block**: `mumble-rate-two-week-report` already triggers on that date and a duplicate trigger for the same day is noise in the instrument. **Steward's direction, 2026-09-02: look at it on 8 September with the rest of the Tarbuckle work.**
+
+⚠ **What the number does NOT establish.** Whether 6.7 s is *wrong* — the seam calls a model, so seconds are the expected order, and the question at the revisit is whether a wrap-time pause of that length is worth what the seam says. n = 6 is thin, and successful hook runs with empty output are never persisted to transcripts, so the recorded runs are a floor on how often it fires, not a census. **This is a datum for the revisit, not a verdict.**
 
 **Files affected:** none. This item is a record.
 **Awaiting:** nothing. ⚠ **Filed with no live ask by design** — it exists so that four decisions and one observation stop living only in a conversation, which is the exact condition PENDING-164 reports as the disease.