diff --git a/docs/opencode-parity.md b/docs/opencode-parity.md
index e9281aab..1ad0fb83 100644
--- a/docs/opencode-parity.md
+++ b/docs/opencode-parity.md
@@ -181,6 +181,30 @@ Each phase is independently shippable. Nothing here is a big-bang rewrite.
 
 ---
 
+## If you are picking this up cold
+
+Phases 0 and 1 are ready to implement as written. Phase 2 is a **decision**, not a task — do not start it
+as work.
+
+**Reproduce each defect before fixing it.** The B-list came from read-only surveys, and one of those
+surveys reasoned from a dead file for part of its report (see below). Only the event-path claim was
+re-verified at source. Every B item names its files and lines; open them and confirm the defect is real
+and still present before changing anything. A "fix" to something that was never broken is worse than the
+defect, because the next reader will trust it.
+
+Two that are worth extra care:
+
+- **B2** is a six-hop chain from `ChatDetailPanel` down to `isClaudeModel`. Confirm the whole chain
+  rather than the endpoints — it is the kind of claim that is right in outline and wrong about which hop
+  drops the value.
+- **B1** implies OpenCode sessions are invisible in the UI today. That is trivially checkable by opening
+  `/chat` and looking. Do that first: it either confirms the whole B-list's provenance in one glance, or
+  tells you the surveys were working from a stale tree.
+
+This machine and the home-lab server run the same repo but not necessarily the same OpenCode binary.
+Both `runner.ts:38` and `client.ts:170` pin behaviour to "verified against opencode 1.17.9" with nothing
+enforcing it, so check the installed version before trusting any NDJSON shape in here.
+
 ## Two things to verify before trusting any of this
 
 - The surveys initially disagreed about which file is the live event path. **`runner.ts:174-214` is