diff --git a/AGENTS.md b/AGENTS.md
index a93af2e..e5c817b 100644
--- a/AGENTS.md
+++ b/AGENTS.md
@@ -942,6 +942,14 @@ linked runbooks.
   already does all three; ad-hoc fetches tend not to. Gated repos (e.g.
   `orcarouter/Qwen3.8-Flash-Next-Uncensored-GGUF`, same 104.09 GiB Q4_K_S)
   return 403 even with the host's HF token until that account accepts the gate.
+- **A scout verdict is a lead, never a finding.** In the 2026-10-19 vault de-dup
+  campaign, four read-only scouts worked the same pages: one classified era pages as
+  stale *because* they document retired payloads (that is an era page's content), one
+  reported files that do not exist, one reported duplications that grep disproved
+  (`457.9 t/s` and the ping-RTT table are solo-held by `Ethernet Bandwidth Math`),
+  and one cited a line number past the end of the file it judged. Re-verify every
+  claimed duplicate and every claimed staleness against the file and today's fleet
+  state before editing; a scout yield buys no evidence.
 
 ## Runbook Index