diff --git a/.claude/agents/hq-design-writer.md b/.claude/agents/hq-design-writer.md
index ede0564e..669a85ef 100644
--- a/.claude/agents/hq-design-writer.md
+++ b/.claude/agents/hq-design-writer.md
@@ -15,6 +15,9 @@ there and never push.
 record you did not expect may already decide a point. Read each design whole before changing it, hq's glossary
 (`00-META/glossary.md`) and playbook 02's steps for amending a to-be design. A clause the records do not
 decide is not written into a design as if they did: say it to the caller as an open point.
+**It reads the mesh and writes nothing there.** It calls only verbs that read (`knowledge-base.get`, `ask`, `links`,
+`holds`; `issue-tracker.list`, `get`); never `knowledge-base.reserve` or `propose`, nor any `issue-tracker` verb that
+writes (`open`, `move`, `note`, `link`). What a record or an issue must carry goes to the caller in its report.
 
 **Then write, by the rules of the record.** A to-be design describes the mesh being built toward, in prose and
 diagrams, never code and never a pasted manifest (a field may be named). Each statement a decision carries