diff --git a/test/integration/harness.ts b/test/integration/harness.ts
index 2f6d281..b3f259d 100644
--- a/test/integration/harness.ts
+++ b/test/integration/harness.ts
@@ -89,15 +89,22 @@ const UPSTREAM = new Map<string, string>([
 /**
  * What a manifest's image reference becomes on the machine.
  *
- * Three cases, and the middle one is the whole change:
+ * Four cases, and the second one is the whole change:
  *
  *   - **Ours** becomes the ID the machine holds it under. Nothing serves it, and nothing needs to.
  *   - **Anything already pinned by digest** is returned exactly as written. The machine pulls it
  *     from the internet, over its uplink, which is what a real machine does and what the lab spent
  *     a long time serving from a registry of its own instead.
- *   - **A bare repository or tag** is one of ours in spirit — a bed naming an image by hand — and
- *     is given the digest the catalogue pins. A tag would be refused by mesh-host anyway, and
- *     refusing here says why rather than failing on the machine.
+ *   - **A bare repository a bed names by hand** is given the digest mesh-catalog pins for it, so a
+ *     bed runs the image the mesh ships. A tag would be refused by mesh-host anyway.
+ *   - **A tag this harness has never heard of** is passed through untouched, and said out loud.
+ *
+ * That last case is not politeness, it is a finding the lab's registry was hiding. Seven catalogue
+ * modules name `registry-api.…/novox/…:latest` — a TAG, which ADR 0006 forbids and mesh-host
+ * refuses. It never showed, because the rewrite replaced every reference with a digest the lab's
+ * registry had assigned, tag or not. There is nothing to replace it with now, and the honest
+ * outcome is that those modules fail to apply, saying exactly why, on the node that carries them —
+ * rather than an assertion here taking the whole bed down before it starts.
  */
 export function onTheMachine(reference: string, held: HeldImage[]): string {
   if (isMeshBuilt(reference)) {
@@ -112,13 +119,15 @@ export function onTheMachine(reference: string, held: HeldImage[]): string {
   if (reference.includes("@sha256:")) return reference;
 
   const upstream = UPSTREAM.get(repositoryOf(reference));
-  assert.ok(
-    upstream,
-    `${reference} is not pinned and this harness does not know an upstream digest for it. ` +
-      `Add the one mesh-catalog pins, or write the reference out in full — a tag moves, and the ` +
-      `host refuses one.`,
+  if (upstream) return upstream;
+
+  console.log(
+    `UNPINNED: ${reference} names a tag, not a digest. The host will refuse it (novox/hq ` +
+      `ADR 0006). The lab's own registry used to paper over this by assigning a digest to ` +
+      `whatever was pushed; nothing does now. Fix the manifest, or add its digest to the ` +
+      `harness's UPSTREAM table.`,
   );
-  return upstream;
+  return reference;
 }
 
 export interface Capability {