diff --git a/CLAUDE.md b/CLAUDE.md
index 882e951..76723eb 100644
--- a/CLAUDE.md
+++ b/CLAUDE.md
@@ -189,6 +189,51 @@ charter, not here.
   are diagrammed in `docs/MCP-Contract.md` §6, kept out of this file because it loads into every
   session's context.
 
+### Redeploying the daemon — the lead may do this (primary only)
+
+**A merge is not a deployment.** The running `bridged` holds the jar it was started with, so a
+feature merged to `main` does nothing until the daemon is rebuilt and restarted. Saying "shipped"
+about code the live daemon has never loaded is a false report. The lead **may and should** redeploy
+rather than hand the job back to the operator.
+
+Workers must never do this. A worker has no business restarting the daemon it is talking through,
+and stopping it kills the worker's own channel mid-turn.
+
+```bash
+# 1. Build. Never pipe mvn — a pipe's exit code hides BUILD FAILURE.
+mvn -f bridged/pom.xml clean install
+
+# 2. Find and stop the running daemon.
+pgrep -f 'bridged/target/bridged.jar'
+kill <pid>
+
+# 3. Start it again FROM A LOGIN SHELL, detached, with cwd = bridged/.
+(cd bridged && zsh -lc 'nohup java -jar target/bridged.jar >> bridged.out 2>&1 &')
+```
+
+Five things to get right, each of which has gone wrong here before:
+
+1. **Login shell, or workers silently lose their forge token.** The daemon inherits
+   `WORKER_GITEA_TOKEN` from the shell that starts it, and that comes from
+   `${SHARED_ENV}/tools/secrets.sh`. Start it from a non-login shell and the variable is empty, the
+   daemon starts fine, and the failure appears much later as workers that cannot open a PR. Nothing
+   logs this at startup — that gap is why the rule has to be remembered here.
+2. **Drain live members first.** `bridge_list`, then `bridge_stop` each member, and collect anything
+   you still want with `bridge_poll` before you kill anything. A restart drops in-flight tickets and
+   rendezvous, and a member's report is not recoverable once its ticket is gone.
+3. **A restart is the only way deferred config keys take effect.** That is usually the reason to do
+   it. The startup log names which keys it accepted and which it deferred — read those lines rather
+   than assuming.
+4. **Re-check identity afterwards.** Call `bridge_whoami` and confirm it still answers `primary`. The
+   lead is found by its tab label (`fleet.leaders.*.tab`), and a lead whose tab no longer matches is
+   demoted to worker, which refuses every orchestration call.
+5. **Prove the new jar is the one running.** Confirm a *fresh* `bridged listening` line at the end of
+   `bridged/bridged.out`, dated after the restart. An old daemon that never died looks identical from
+   the outside.
+
+If a step is refused by the command classifier, do not try to route around it. Say what you were
+going to run and why, and ask the operator to run it with `!`.
+
 ### The prompt is part of the product — update it with the code (mandatory)
 
 This repo *is* the bridge, so the canonical block above is not documentation about someone else's