marketing: FRE-199 third pair of informational pages (drafts) + pitch narrowed to the no-figure shape

Pair 3 (internal target Thu 2026-11-12, six days early):
- agent-worktree-contention — 'How do you manage worktrees when your agents
  end up waiting on each other?' (backlog 1xlz2bs, Scan 6 #4); git worktree +
  Docker Compose project-name docs fetched and read 2026-11-05.
- agent-keeps-asking — 'Why does your coding agent keep stopping to ask you
  questions?' (handback cluster: 1xlfqmo, 1xk0ghj, 1xlxw0q); permission +
  hooks claims re-verified live 2026-11-05 against code.claude.com; the
  1xlfqmo poster's measurement figures deliberately not cited.

Pitch narrowed per CTO reopening verdict: trial→paid placeholder deleted
(FRE-202 cohort too young; ratio waits for FRE-197), second breakage chosen
(NOOK-815 uninvoked suite), any count named as activations, downloads never
quoted.

marketing/drafts/newsletter-postmortem-pitch/rationale.md

@@ -24,15 +24,38 @@ The lead paragraph is the 0.13.4 delta incident (FRE-542): the appcast stayed
 at 0.13.4 while its five delta files 404'd — the publish path pruned before
 the feed was up. The fix (upload enclosures, verify URLs, copy the appcast,
 then prune) is in `scripts/upload-release.sh` and is engineering-verified by
-the FRE-542 record. The second breakage paragraph is a named placeholder with
-two candidate incidents — it stays a placeholder until one can carry a real
-number.
+the FRE-542 record.
+
+**Second breakage, chosen 2026-11-06 (CTO direction):** the relay regression
+that shipped behind a passing suite (NOOK-815) — the suite that would have
+cought it existed but nothing invoked it; the fix wires it into the standard
+test entry point. It was chosen over the changelog-blanking incident because
+it is a complete story with no number needed and no overlap with the lead
+(both remaining candidates were publish-path incidents; one story about the
+publish path is enough). The placeholder is gone: no paragraph in the pitch
+waits on a figure any more.
+
+## Narrowed 2026-11-06 — what the numbers can and cannot support
+
+The CTO's reopening verdict on FRE-199 confirmed **no figure for the pitch
+today**: FRE-202's snapshot (trial started 2, purchase 0, activation 0; 291 of
+291 rows predate the FRE-366 instrumentation) cannot yield a trial→paid ratio —
+that waits for FRE-197's mature Day 28–35 cohort read. So the pitch narrowed:
+
+- the "X% trial→paid" placeholder is deleted, not held;
+- if any count ships, it is **activations** (relay store, one row per activated
+  install), named as activations — downloads (S3 side) are never quoted;
+- a new paragraph — "what we're not going to quote you" — turns the missing
+  number into part of the post-mortem's credibility instead of a gap;
+- with the no-figure shape, the only inputs left before send are the CTO's
+  query confirmation (if a count is attached) and the sponsor's send.
 
 ## Hard rules honoured
 
-- Every figure is `[PLACEHOLDER]` and labelled as such; the file says in its
-  header that no figure in it is a measurement.
-- No invented number, no estimated conversion, no user counts.
+- No figure in the file is a measurement; nothing is estimated to fill a gap.
+- No conversion figure ships — the ratio is FRE-197's, gated and CTO-confirmed.
+- Any count that ships is activations, named as activations; downloads are
+  never quoted.
 - The two caveats (per-install conversion with install cap 3; downloads ≠
   activations) are written to travel inside the pitch, not a footnote.
 - Paid placements: out, per the issue text and the plan (TLDR ≈ $3k, no
@@ -42,8 +65,9 @@ number.
 
 ## Gates before send
 
-1. Figures from FRE-202 or a CTO-confirmed direct relay-store read — CTO.
-2. CTO confirms the query behind every figure — CTO.
-3. Sponsor approves the send; a human holds the account and sends — sponsor.
-4. Second-breakage paragraph fact-checked against the journal — CMO drafts,
-   CTO verifies.
+1. Any count quoted is activations, from a CTO-confirmed query — CTO.
+2. Trial→paid ratio ships only from FRE-197's mature read, CTO-confirmed;
+   otherwise the no-figure paragraph stands — CTO.
+3. Both breakage paragraphs fact-checked against the engineering record
+   (FRE-542; NOOK-815) — CMO drafts, CTO verifies.
+4. Sponsor approves the send; a human holds the account and sends — sponsor.