diff --git a/Cargo.toml b/Cargo.toml
index 8d9fe31..3e97afa 100644
--- a/Cargo.toml
+++ b/Cargo.toml
@@ -19,6 +19,44 @@ homepage = "https://tangled.org/permadeath.com/atgc"
 readme = "README.md"
 keywords = ["atproto", "tangled", "git", "cli", "pull-request"]
 categories = ["command-line-utilities", "development-tools"]
+# An allowlist, not an `exclude` denylist. Either can describe today's tree;
+# they differ only in what becomes of the file nobody thought about. A denylist
+# publishes it — every config, note and asset added later ships by default, and
+# nothing anywhere announces that it did. Named this way round, an unnamed file
+# is merely missing, and missing is the failure that gets caught: the packaged
+# crate stops building, in `cargo package --verify`, before a release.
+#
+# What that buys is not the byte count. `.cargo/config.toml` sets
+# `rustdocflags = ["-D", "warnings"]`, and cargo reads config from the build's
+# cwd upward — docs.rs builds inside the extracted crate directory, so shipping
+# that file would turn any rustdoc warning into a failed docs build for
+# everyone. `rust-toolchain.toml` would pin 1.97.1 inside someone else's build
+# directory. Neither belongs to anyone but this checkout.
+include = [
+    "/src",
+    "/build.rs",
+    # Load-bearing at compile time, not documentation that happens to ship:
+    # src/docs.rs pulls every page under docs/ in with
+    # `#![doc = include_str!(...)]`, so a tarball without them does not
+    # compile. Confirmed by packaging without it and watching it fail.
+    "/docs",
+    # The schemas the generated Rust bindings were generated from, and the
+    # manifest recording which upstream commit they were taken at. 164 KB to
+    # let the tarball account for its own generated code, which is a fair rate.
+    "/lexicons",
+    "/lexicons.json",
+    # Its first line names brand/png/lockup-512.png, which is deliberately not
+    # here. That reference is already dead on a crate page — crates.io rewrites
+    # relative README links only for hosts it knows, and tangled.org is not one
+    # — as are the five docs/ links below it. Making this one absolute would
+    # render one image above five links that still go nowhere, which reads as
+    # more working than the page is; the README is left to be fixed whole.
+    "/README.md",
+    # `license = "MIT OR Apache-2.0"` offers a choice between two documents. A
+    # tarball carrying neither makes that an offer with nothing behind it.
+    "/LICENSE-MIT",
+    "/LICENSE-APACHE",
+]
 
 # These apply to this package only. vendor/jacquard-oauth is a separate
 # package with its own manifest, so it is not linted by them.