diff --git a/canon/architecture/adr-012-projection-source-and-preliminary-overlay.md b/canon/architecture/adr-012-projection-source-and-preliminary-overlay.md
index 00170a7..8e77224 100644
--- a/canon/architecture/adr-012-projection-source-and-preliminary-overlay.md
+++ b/canon/architecture/adr-012-projection-source-and-preliminary-overlay.md
@@ -128,8 +128,37 @@ Three properties make it real rather than ceremonial:
 - **Routine, not emergency.** It should be run deliberately and often enough that
   it is known to work, not discovered under pressure. A reset that has never been
   performed is indistinguishable from one that does not work.
-- **Scoped.** Per repository as well as fleet-wide. Rebuilding one repository's
-  records must not require discarding everything, or it will never be used.
+- **Per repository is the unit.** Not a convenience over a fleet-wide operation —
+  the repository *is* the unit of reconstruction, and the fleet-wide form is
+  defined as iteration over it.
+
+  This follows from the source. Each repository is a separate forge repository
+  with its own history and its own head commit, so its projection is derivable in
+  isolation and provable in isolation: fetch that repository, rebuild its
+  records, compare against that repository's head. Nothing about that requires
+  knowing the state of any other repository, and a design that made it require so
+  would be inventing a dependency the source does not have.
+
+  It also bounds the blast radius, which is what makes decision 7's "routine"
+  achievable. A rebuild that can only run fleet-wide is an operation nobody runs
+  casually, and therefore an operation nobody runs — which is precisely how
+  `ADR-010`'s never-executed reconstruction claim came to be believed. Scoped to
+  one repository, a rebuild is small enough to be ordinary, and ordinary is the
+  only state in which it stays known-working.
+
+  It is also the only form that composes with the refusals below. A repository
+  holding projection-only records can be held back and dispositioned while every
+  healthy repository around it is rebuilt; an all-or-nothing reset is blocked
+  entirely by a single bad repository, which in practice means it is blocked
+  permanently.
+
+  With contributors, per-repository scope is what keeps one person's rebuild from
+  touching another person's records.
+
+  The fleet-wide form must therefore be a loop over the per-repository form,
+  sharing one implementation. The rarely-used dangerous path and the frequently
+  used safe path must be the same code, so the rare one is exercised by the
+  common one rather than trusted on the strength of never having been run.
 - **Idempotent and verifiable.** A reset followed by a reset produces the same
   projection, and the result can be compared against the forge to show it matches.
   Derived identifiers (`ADR-007`) are what make this possible: the same commit
@@ -147,6 +176,13 @@ local database, and a rebuild at that moment would have erased them. The reset
 path must detect that condition and stop, naming what would be lost, rather than
 proceed and report success.
 
+The refusal is evaluated per repository, in keeping with the scope above. A
+repository whose records all exist in the forge is rebuildable regardless of what
+any other repository holds, and a fleet-wide run must skip and report the
+repositories it refuses rather than abort the whole pass. Otherwise one
+unresolved repository blocks reconstruction everywhere, and the capability decays
+back into the untested assumption this decision exists to prevent.
+
 **8. Formal git review stays optional.** Deriving from the default branch gives a
 shared baseline without requiring pull requests. Review can be adopted per
 repository where it earns its keep; this ADR neither mandates nor forbids it.