`orphan` read two graphs: the authored `related:` edges and the mention edges derived from prose. Reading the derived one made the finding self-clearing (issue-77a09761e1d4) — an orphan triage is a list of orphan ids, so writing one closed every id it listed. ## The decision `orphan` reads `related:` alone. A document also carries `isolated:` — a free-form reason it is *meant* to stand alone — and a document that has one is not reported. docir update --set-related :refines # it was unwired docir update --set-isolated "scope deferred" # it stands alone by design docir query --expr "isolated" # audit every exemption docir update --set-isolated "" # withdraw one ## Why a field and not a mention The two states a triage distinguishes — "correctly isolated" and "still unwired" — are written in identical characters when they are written as prose. No filter over a body can separate an id that is being exempted from an id that is being listed as outstanding, because the difference is a conclusion somebody reached, not a property of the text. A field records the conclusion. It is also the thing the six correctly-isolated documents in issue-77a09761e1d4 actually had in common, which the mention graph was standing in for by accident. ## Why a reason and not a boolean `isolated: true` records that somebody silenced the warning. It does not record what they concluded, so the next reviewer cannot tell a decision from a drive-by, and re-deciding costs the same as deciding did. The field follows `owner:` — free text, empty means absent. It follows `owner:` in one more way that was almost got wrong here: writing it stamps `updated`, as every flag `update` carries does. The rule that a rewrite must not launder the review clock adr-bd7c4f3c5764 depends on governs the writes nobody asked for — a tag rename, `check --fix`, a forced delete's unlink — not an edit somebody typed. Three docstrings claimed the opposite until a test on an advancing clock disagreed; on the suite's frozen clock the claim and its negation are the same assertion. ## What this gives back, and what it costs The false positive that put mentions in the check is real: before them, `orphan` fired on every document whose author linked it in a sentence, which is half of why `--strict` stopped failing on warnings. It is now answered by an exemption somebody wrote on purpose rather than by a side effect of where an id was typed. Measured on this store the day it shipped: 194 live documents, and removing prose from the check restores **zero** orphans — every live document here carries an authored edge. The cost is bounded by how many documents a corpus links only in prose, and the remedy for each is the edge it was missing. ## What survives, and what an older build sees The mention graph is unchanged. It still feeds `docir context` expansion, the `mentions` / `mentioned_by` lists on `get`, and the Tier 2 `unresolved-mention` advisory — none of which gates anything. What it lost is its only Tier 1 reader, so `MentionRepository.all_resolved` is gone with it. `isolated:` is additive frontmatter. A docir before this release reads a document carrying it without complaint and simply cannot see it — but a *write* through that build drops the key, because it renders frontmatter from the fields it knows. Withdrawing an exemption by downgrade is the failure mode, and it is visible in `git diff`.