diff --git a/research/witness-authoritative-networking/prior-art-2026-10-26.md b/research/witness-authoritative-networking/prior-art-2026-10-26.md
index 739fdac3..dd547b38 100644
--- a/research/witness-authoritative-networking/prior-art-2026-10-26.md
+++ b/research/witness-authoritative-networking/prior-art-2026-10-26.md
@@ -4,6 +4,8 @@
 
 The concept began as witness-authoritative networking; the consensus literature is the closest existing body of work, not the origin. The goal: no centralized authoritative server should be needed to resolve local disputes such as whether Alice shot Bob first or Bob shot Alice first. A quorum of nearby clients reaches agreement on the ordering, and whoever is determined to be wrong is corrected exactly as in a server-authoritative model with client-side prediction, except that the correction can happen before the server hears about it.
 
+**Why the current implementation looks as it does (operator, 2026-10-26).** CultMesh was deliberately built for trusted co-op first, for Aetheria: Starbridge, with the witness-authority problem explicitly deferred. Starbridge itself collapsed under the weight of building Eve at the same time. The trusted-primary, unsigned-witness shape described below is therefore the intended first stage, not a failed attempt at Byzantine tolerance; hardening against adversarial peers is the deferred second stage this document prepares.
+
 The report below was produced by a read-only Eyes pass. It describes the CultMesh implementation as read from source on 2026-10-26 and compares it with prior art; it does not recommend a design. Items marked as from memory were not re-fetched.
 
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