diff --git a/PENDING.md b/PENDING.md
index b34485b..14f23ea 100644
--- a/PENDING.md
+++ b/PENDING.md
@@ -897,6 +897,51 @@ datum, n=1; (ii) the 2026-08-20 FL5 datum immediately above; (iii) the 2025 arm,
 found-not-run. **No new instrument currently feeds this item.** Named by the jurist, 2026-08-20,
 and recorded here at its direction — the gap is created by the re-aim, not discovered later.
 
+### Docket entry 2026-08-25 — the buddy fool contributes ZERO to this item, by construction
+
+*Written in explicitly, at the steward's direction, on the day the fool acquired bones. The point of
+saying it here rather than leaving it inferable: **every day this sits unstated, the fool looks more
+like evidence for a question it cannot address.** It is the most visible object in the programme, it
+now has a seed, a rule and a draw, and this item is starving — the two facts sit next to each other
+and invite exactly the wrong inference.*
+
+**Not a shortfall. A design property, ratified in REVIEWED-125, and checkable in three clauses of
+the v2 doctrine (each read before being cited here, not recalled):**
+
+| clause | what it says | why PENDING-89 gets nothing |
+|---|---|---|
+| **§2** | *"Not a checker, auditor, reviewer, or devil's advocate. **If its output can be graded, the design has failed.**"* — and, in its own words, *"**Not an answer to Constraint 6. See §11.**"* | This item's question is whether a **checking** position is independent. The fool is constitutionally not a checking position, and the doctrine says so directly rather than leaving it to interpretation. |
+| **§9** | *"Output reaches **the steward**. Filed nowhere. No `PENDING` entry, no log, no item."* | Correlation of misses requires a **record of misses**. The fool produces none, deliberately — the unfileability is what keeps it uningestible. There is nothing to correlate, ever. |
+| **§11** | If the fool runs on Claude, **three of four parties share formation** — which makes Constraint 6's concession *worse rather than better*. | Seating it does not add an independent position. On the doctrine's own strong/weak distinction it **subtracts**, and §11 was written to say so at the outset rather than be discovered later. |
+
+⚠ **So the fool must never be cited toward this item, in either direction** — not as evidence that
+the arrangement is checked, and not as evidence that it is not. A fool that fires usefully proves
+nothing here; a fool that fires uselessly disproves nothing here. Any future entry that reaches for
+it has misread §2.
+
+**Where this item's evidence actually lives** — the sources are retrospective, and both of the real
+ones are already filed and already authorized to read:
+
+1. **The v1 Chamber archive — `PENDING-151`, and the strongest source available.** 9 complete
+   formation pairs, 6 sessions, 19,479 words; **AUTHORIZED to read** as REVIEWED-125 source (iv).
+   It is the only place in this system where **two formations have already read the same text**, and
+   it passes the self-authored-corpus test outright: produced in 2025, before the contamination
+   doctrine existed and before any of this reasoning. ⚠ **Bounded, and REVIEWED-125 binds it:** it
+   answers **generation** diversity — two voices producing a reading — and **never correlation of
+   misses**, which is readers auditing a proposal. Different objects. It may not be reported as the
+   latter under any framing.
+2. **The Thistleweld corpus — `PENDING-153`,** the kind-3 read: the arrangement critiqued from
+   outside it. Closest thing on hand to an outside position, and it exists.
+3. The three retrospective datums already listed above: trial-04 (n=1), the 2026-08-20 FL5 datum,
+   and the 2025 arm recorded as found-not-run.
+
+**Which sharpens the note above it rather than answering it.** That note says no new *instrument*
+feeds this item after the re-aim. That remains true and is unchanged by anything here. What changes
+is the shape of the gap: this item is not waiting on something to be built — **it is waiting on two
+already-filed, already-authorized reads to be performed.** Starving for want of execution is a
+different condition from starving for want of an instrument, and it is the cheaper one to end.
+
+
 ## PENDING-90 — First L2 transfer: checker position in the calibration loop
 **Date:** 2026-08-02
 **Tag:** [ESCALATE]