diff --git a/services/hermes/NOTES.md b/services/hermes/NOTES.md
index 400bf44f..bd8437f5 100644
--- a/services/hermes/NOTES.md
+++ b/services/hermes/NOTES.md
@@ -275,9 +275,37 @@ Use this short explanation:
   one RWO checkout. Repository and base-branch identity comes from the canonical
   board registry rather than task-supplied metadata.
 - Model Pods have no pool key, broker mount, broker egress, or Kubernetes token.
-  Ordinal mediator Deployments are separate network identities colocated with
-  the matching workspace PVC; they alone authenticate exact-run results and
-  reach the PR14 SCM broker.
+  Ordinal mediator Deployments are separate network identities that co-mount the
+  matching workspace PVC; they alone authenticate exact-run results and reach the
+  PR14 SCM broker.
+- The ordinal workspace claim is `ReadWriteMany` because the worker and its
+  mediator both mount it. With `ReadWriteOnce` a drain or preemption that moved
+  only one of them left the other holding the attachment on the old node, and
+  the ordinal deadlocked on Multi-Attach until an operator deleted a Pod.
+  Colocation is now a scheduling preference and both Pods run at `scavenger`
+  priority, so either can be evicted and rescheduled on its own. There is
+  deliberately no PodDisruptionBudget: this is a best-effort pool and a budget
+  would impede node drains. Claims only one Pod mounts stay `ReadWriteOnce`.
+- `lease_failed` is a *retryable* durable state, not a terminal one. It means the
+  ordinal was released but Kanban has not confirmed the outcome, so every
+  maintenance pass retries it. Only `finalized` and `stale` are terminal, and
+  only terminal rows are garbage-collected, so no run is dropped before the pool
+  knows what happened to it. If the log keeps reporting a deferred lease park for
+  the same run, Kanban is refusing an exact-run park on a task it still reports
+  as running: inspect that task rather than deleting the row.
+- The broker accepts branch creation only. A pool retry that adds commits
+  therefore publishes a new `<branch>-attempt-<n>` (or, failing that,
+  `<branch>-<head12>`) ref in the same reviewed namespace instead of updating the
+  ref a previous attempt published, and adopts an existing ref that already
+  points at the exact head rather than pushing again. Expect one draft per
+  published ref; each is still human-reviewed. A submission that cannot land
+  blocks the run with the reason and leaves the commits on the ordinal's
+  workspace, so prior work is recoverable.
+- Provider CLIs install once per pinned version onto a durable per-ordinal
+  `tools` claim, re-verified against the real binaries so a pruned cache
+  reinstalls. The pool is intentionally absent from the `hermes` Kustomization's
+  `healthChecks`: gating that 10m window on a best-effort pool would stall
+  `hermes-chat` and `hermes-observer-bindings`, which `dependsOn: hermes`.
 - A hashed execution-pool ConfigMap, protocol-version readiness checks, and
   versioned SCM boundary name make code/config changes controlled rollouts. A
   rollout is still a human-reviewed operation; this repository change does not