diff --git a/docs/product-copy-context.md b/docs/product-copy-context.md
index dbebe86..b183e50 100644
--- a/docs/product-copy-context.md
+++ b/docs/product-copy-context.md
@@ -48,6 +48,29 @@ make ephemeral consumers cheap without making the network absorb the rebuild.
   statements about the currently running build.
 - Runtime facts belong on /status; the / page should remain legible, welcoming,
   and honest about whether it is filling or serving.
+- **Do not put process-local counters on a page that describes the run.**
+  "up N" and "N live events this run" are measured from process start, and the
+  process currently restarts at every backfill batch boundary. Checked on
+  experiment 6 at 55.6 h elapsed, with 16,728,092,842 events archived, the
+  homepage read:
+
+  ```
+  up 12m · 289,369 live events this run · 0 listening
+  ```
+
+  Both numbers were correct and both were useless: they understated a
+  two-and-a-half-day archive by roughly 275x, because the last restart was 12
+  minutes earlier. A visitor cannot tell a permanently-young instance from a new
+  one. Prefer durable values — archived event count, elapsed since the run
+  began, `complete` repository count — and reserve process-local figures for
+  `/status`, where a reader is looking at *this process* rather than the
+  archive. `0 listening` is fine and honest: serving is gated until steady
+  state.
+
+  This is the batch-boundary restart defect surfacing publicly rather than a
+  copy mistake (`gotchas.md`, `HttpConnectionClosing`). Worth fixing in the copy
+  regardless, since a durable counter is the right thing to show even once the
+  process stops dying.
 
 ## Presentation guardrails