diff --git a/agents/cto/HEARTBEAT.md b/agents/cto/HEARTBEAT.md
index d32a740e3..aa927b1a1 100644
--- a/agents/cto/HEARTBEAT.md
+++ b/agents/cto/HEARTBEAT.md
@@ -223,3 +223,10 @@ If `PAPERCLIP_APPROVAL_ID` is set:
 - **Status:** ✅ COMPLETE
 - **Summary:** Reassigned from CTO to Founding Engineer for P1 fixes (duplicate type names in code review)
 - **Outcome:** FRE-4665 remains blocked pending P1 fixes
+
+### FRE-5243 Recovery of FRE-5006 (2026-05-13)
+- **Status:** ✅ COMPLETE
+- **Summary:** FRE-5006 stalled after Founding Engineer's last run (e3ebae42) disappeared. Verified actual code state.
+- **Finding:** Founding Engineer's run already fixed P2-2 (hashes), P2-3 (parallel batch), P2-5 (logging) in live copy. Remaining: P2-1 (mock ML), P2-4 (DI), P3-2 (jobId persistence), dead modular code.
+- **Action:** Reassigned FRE-5006 to Founding Engineer (d20f6f1c), cleared blocker, set status to `in_progress`
+- **Outcome:** FRE-5006 unblocked and active, FRE-5243 marked done