diff --git a/03-DESIGN/01-to-be/21-the-installation-in-full.md b/03-DESIGN/01-to-be/21-the-installation-in-full.md
index d3c7d91..d8486d8 100644
--- a/03-DESIGN/01-to-be/21-the-installation-in-full.md
+++ b/03-DESIGN/01-to-be/21-the-installation-in-full.md
@@ -107,9 +107,16 @@ At step 13 nothing has installed one, so the first build of the shared base reso
 other way — today by a git URL, which is
 [issue 053](../../04-ISSUES/053-the-sdk-is-pinned-twice-and-the-two-disagree/00-report.md).
 
-**The host does not survive a reboot.** The installer refuses to invent a unit file, and the way it
-is started otherwise does not come back. Every container returns; the agent does not — so the
-machine runs the right things and can no longer be told anything.
+**The installer does not install the host's unit, though one exists.** `mesh-host/packaging/` ships
+`nox-mesh-host.service` and two companions; the installer declines to place them because a unit file
+is a packaging decision. So an install that does nothing further leaves a machine whose containers
+come back after a reboot and whose agent does not — it runs the right things and can no longer be
+told anything.
+
+**This is a gap in packaging, not in the mesh**, and the distinction matters: the lab's
+`--host-in-background` says in its own help that it does not survive a reboot, so a lab run failing
+this is the lab being honest rather than the mesh being broken. What is missing is the step that
+puts the shipped unit on the machine.
 
 **Nothing asserts a mesh was installed this way.** A claim that a machine was brought up by this
 procedure cannot be contradicted by anything afterwards.