diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
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+++ b/README.md
@@ -1,7 +1,12 @@
 # risk-nexus
 
-Risk register and regulatory intake for the estate. Serves
-`risk.coulomb.social`. Owned by `the-custodian`.
+Risk register and regulatory intake for the estate. Owned by `the-custodian`.
+
+**It does not serve anything yet.** `INTENT.md` names `risk.coulomb.social` as
+the eventual surface; today publication runs through `policy-nexus` and three
+documents are waiting for an address. Recorded here rather than left as a
+claim, because a stated surface that does not exist is the class of thing this
+register grades other repos down for.
 
 Holds findings — security, architecture, operational, compliance — with a
 severity, an owner and a date; decides whether and when each is published; and
diff --git a/docs/method/intake.md b/docs/method/intake.md
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+---
+id: RISK-METHOD-INTAKE
+type: method
+title: "Intake: the four sources, including the two that had no path"
+status: adopted
+owner: risk-nexus
+adopted: "2026-08-21"
+workplan: RISK-WP-0005-T02
+review_interval: 6m
+---
+
+# Intake
+
+`INTENT.md` claims intake "from any source: research, review, incident,
+external report". Until 2026-08-21 two of those four had no path at all, and
+every finding in the register had arrived from a repo reading its own code.
+
+A register that only receives self-assessments is a self-assessment aggregator.
+That is a respectable thing to be and it is not what the intent says.
+
+## The four sources
+
+| Source | Path | State |
+| --- | --- | --- |
+| Research | a repo or agent files against `findings/README.md` | working, nine findings |
+| Review | same, usually against a ladder or standard | working, most of the nine |
+| **Incident** | below | new |
+| **External report** | below — and the address is not this repo's to create | routed |
+
+## Incident
+
+An incident is a finding about something happening **now** rather than a latent
+defect. The difference is not severity; it is that someone is exercising it, or
+the loss is occurring, while the record is being written.
+
+### What is different
+
+- **File first, grade later.** The normal order is reversed: get the record
+  into `findings/` with what is known, and grade it in the same hour rather
+  than in the same sitting. An ungraded incident is still a record; an unwritten
+  one is nothing.
+- **`incident: true` and a `first_observed` timestamp**, both in front-matter.
+  The timestamp matters more than the grade, because obligations run from it.
+- **Cadence starts at `instant` and stays there** until the incident is over.
+  That is the ladder's existing behaviour and needs no special case: something
+  that keeps moving keeps resetting.
+- **The 72-hour clock.** If personal data is or may be involved,
+  `RISK-POL-0005` (GDPR Arts 33–34) requires notification within 72 hours of
+  becoming aware. **`first_observed` is what starts that clock**, and this is
+  the one place the register puts a hard deadline on itself. Escalation is
+  immediate under trigger 1 or 2 — not batched, notwithstanding the batching
+  rule, because batching exists to protect the operator's attention and a
+  72-hour clock outranks that.
+- **Severity is scored on what is happening, not what could.** The `L4`
+  likelihood band — "already happening" — exists for exactly this and is
+  otherwise almost unused.
+
+### What is not different
+
+Ownership, routing, and the boundary. The repo that owns the system owns the
+response; this register records, grades, escalates and keeps the clock. A risk
+register that runs incident response is a second engineering team with a
+stopwatch.
+
+## External report
+
+Someone outside the estate finding something and having somewhere to send it.
+
+**No such place exists.** There is no `security.txt` anywhere in the estate, no
+published address, and no route from an outsider to this register. If someone
+found a flaw in a coulomb.social surface tomorrow, their options would be to
+guess an email address or say nothing.
+
+**Where that address lives is not this repo's decision.** It is a published
+surface, which makes it `policy-nexus`'s to serve and the custodian's to
+approve. Routed on 2026-08-21 with a proposal:
+
+- a `security.txt` (RFC 9116) at `policy.coulomb.social/.well-known/`, naming
+  a contact and a preferred language, with an expiry date as the RFC requires;
+- reports arriving there routed to `risk-nexus` and filed like any other
+  finding, with `reported_by: external`;
+- **no promise of a bounty, a timeline, or safe harbour.** The ask is a route
+  in, not a commitment out. A published disclosure policy is a later decision
+  and a heavier one.
+
+Until that exists, this register's claim to accept external reports is
+aspirational and `STATE.md` says so.
+
+## What all four share
+
+The reporter says what is true and how they know. This register says how bad it
+is and who hears about it. Nothing in this document changes that boundary —
+including for incidents, where the temptation to take over is strongest.
diff --git a/docs/method/production-transition.md b/docs/method/production-transition.md
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@@ -0,0 +1,91 @@
+---
+id: RISK-METHOD-PRODUCTION
+type: method
+title: "The production transition: what expires, and who says when"
+status: proposed
+owner: the-custodian
+drafted_by: risk-nexus
+drafted: "2026-08-21"
+workplan: RISK-WP-0005-T03
+review_interval: 6m
+---
+
+# The production transition
+
+Five findings owe a re-score here. One acceptance **expires** here. Several
+dormant legal policies activate here. And until 2026-08-21 nobody had defined
+the event, named who declares it, or told the repos that carry the obligations.
+
+An acceptance that expires on an undefined event expires on nobody's calendar.
+
+**Status: `proposed`.** The definition is the custodian's; the plumbing is
+this repo's.
+
+## Proposed definition
+
+> **The production transition is the first moment any system in the estate
+> holds, processes or decides about the data of a real external person or
+> tenant.**
+
+Deliberately not: a launch announcement, a version number, a deployment to a
+cluster named production, or a declaration made in advance. All four can be
+true while nothing real is at stake, and all four can be false on the day
+something is.
+
+Two consequences worth stating, because they are what make the definition
+usable:
+
+- **It can happen by accident.** A single real signup, a migrated contact list,
+  one counterparty's document sent through a pipeline for testing. Which is
+  why it is defined by what is held rather than by what was announced.
+- **It is not reversible.** Deleting the data afterwards does not un-transition
+  the estate; it changes the exposure and not the fact that the estate is now
+  the kind of thing that holds real data.
+
+## Who declares it
+
+The operator, through `the-custodian`. Not this register: `INTENT.md` keeps
+"deciding what canon says" and estate-level facts with the custodian, and a
+risk register that unilaterally declares the estate to be in production has
+appointed itself.
+
+What this register does is **notice and ask**. Any finding, verification or
+policy check that turns up real external data in a system triggers one question
+to the custodian: *has the transition happened?* The answer is theirs; the
+record is ours.
+
+## What fires on the day
+
+| Obligation | Carried by | Count today |
+| --- | --- | --- |
+| Re-score every finding with `production_rescore: true` | this register | 5 |
+| `RISK-F-0007`'s acceptance expires — the unverified tenant boundary stops being carried | this register, escalating | 1 |
+| `RISK-POL-0001`, `0003`, `0004`, `0005`, `0008` activate; `0002` fully | owning repos | 6 policies |
+| `RISK-F-0008`'s acceptance ends — the retention basis stops being an internal determination | this register | 1 |
+
+`make check` lists the first two under "owed at the production transition"
+today, so the size of the obligation is visible before the day rather than
+discovered on it.
+
+## How the register hears about it
+
+Three routes, in order of reliability:
+
+1. **The custodian says so**, in a message. Preferred, and the only one that is
+   also a decision.
+2. **A finding or verification turns up real external data**, and this register
+   asks. This is the route that works when nobody remembered to declare.
+3. **A legal policy activates on its own condition** — the accessibility or
+   data-subject-rights entries in `docs/regulatory/policies/` fire on facts
+   about the world, not on a declaration, and a repo consulting one is evidence
+   the transition may have happened.
+
+Route 2 exists because route 1 is exactly the kind of announcement that gets
+skipped in a busy week, and the estate has already demonstrated (`RISK-POL-0012`)
+that an obligation can be live for nineteen months without anyone noticing.
+
+## What this document does not do
+
+It does not schedule the transition, gate it, or require anything before it. In
+build mode a finding is information — that is unchanged. This says only what
+becomes true on a day that will arrive whether or not it is planned.
diff --git a/docs/method/severity.md b/docs/method/severity.md
index 9bcdc94..cd8ae77 100644
--- a/docs/method/severity.md
+++ b/docs/method/severity.md
@@ -142,6 +142,19 @@ comes back.
 > *Added 2026-08-19 (`RISK-WP-0001-T07`).* Forced by `RISK-F-0006`, where the
 > defect is an absent backup and the reach reading produced nonsense.
 
+## Live incidents
+
+Everything above assumes a latent defect — something reachable that nobody is
+currently reaching. When someone is, three things change:
+
+- **Likelihood is `L4`.** The band means "already happening" and this is what
+  it is for.
+- **Impact is scored on what has occurred plus what is still reachable**, not
+  on the worst case. An incident in progress has facts; use them.
+- **The grade is provisional and expected to move.** File first, grade within
+  the hour, re-grade as facts arrive. `docs/method/intake.md` has the rest,
+  including the 72-hour clock that `first_observed` starts.
+
 ## The floor
 
 `INTENT.md`: if a finding would not change anyone's decision, it is a note,