diff --git a/scripts/deploy-watch.sh b/scripts/deploy-watch.sh
new file mode 100755
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+++ b/scripts/deploy-watch.sh
@@ -0,0 +1,144 @@
+#!/usr/bin/env bash
+#
+# The wait half of the deploy commander: poll for a release tag, and when one appears that has not been
+# attempted, spawn a headless agent to deploy it.
+#
+# WHY THIS IS IN THE REPOSITORY AND NOT WRITTEN FRESH EACH ARMING
+#
+# prompts/deploy-commander.md says the watcher loop is rewritten from scratch every time one arms, and
+# treats that as a given. It is also how the same defect keeps arriving. The loop that was on disk at
+# data/deploy-watch.sh from 2026-08-21 gated on "$v.done" — a file that exists only on SUCCESS — and never
+# called deploy-claim.sh at all. That is precisely the retry storm the claim script was written to make
+# impossible, reintroduced in the one place the claim script cannot reach: the caller that decides whether
+# to invoke it. A rule enforced by a script nobody calls is not enforced.
+#
+# So the loop lives next to the claim it depends on, and changes with it.
+#
+# THE BASELINE IS THE CLAIM, NOT THE SUCCESS
+#
+# A watcher needs to know what counts as new. Here that is "no claim directory for this version" — a record
+# of what has been HANDLED, not of what has SUCCEEDED. The distinction is the whole point: a release that
+# failed is handled. It is looked at by a human, not retried by a loop.
+#
+# deploy-claim.sh honours a pre-existing .done with no .claim, so releases deployed before it existed are
+# already skipped and arming this today fires on none of them.
+#
+# THE CLAIM IS TAKEN HERE, BEFORE THE SPAWN
+#
+# An action that claims its own work has claimed nothing if it dies before getting that far. So the loop
+# claims, then spawns — which means the child must be TOLD the claim is already held. It is about to read
+# prompts/deploy-commander.md, whose claim instruction is addressed to whoever reads it, and an obedient
+# child that claims for itself gets exit 1 and correctly refuses to deploy. See PROMPT below.
+set -u
+
+PLATFORM_DIR="${PLATFORM_DIR:-$HOME/officer-dev/platform}"
+# Empty in the sidecar's environment, where anything built from it resolves to /data/... and the record
+# lands where nothing reads it. A watcher whose baseline is invisible to itself has none.
+OFFICER_ROOT="${OFFICER_ROOT:-$HOME/officer-dev}"
+DEPLOYS_DIR="${DEPLOYS_DIR:-$OFFICER_ROOT/data/deploys}"
+POLL_SECONDS="${POLL_SECONDS:-120}"
+export OFFICER_ROOT DEPLOYS_DIR
+
+CLAIM_SH="$PLATFORM_DIR/scripts/deploy-claim.sh"
+
+stamp() { date -Iseconds; }
+
+if [ ! -x "$CLAIM_SH" ]; then
+  echo "$(stamp) deploy-watch: no claim script at $CLAIM_SH — refusing to arm without one" >&2
+  exit 2
+fi
+
+mkdir -p "$DEPLOYS_DIR" || exit 2
+
+echo "$(stamp) deploy-watch: armed. polling $(cd "$PLATFORM_DIR" && git remote get-url origin) every ${POLL_SECONDS}s"
+echo "$(stamp) deploy-watch: baseline is $DEPLOYS_DIR — a version with a claim is never fired again"
+
+while true; do
+  # origin is the LOCAL gitea over the tailnet. The public hostname arrives through a proxy where every
+  # connection shares one source IP and SSH is refused for long stretches — which presents as an
+  # access-rights error and is not one. Eighty minutes of detection latency on 2026-08-21.
+  raw=$(cd "$PLATFORM_DIR" && timeout 30 git ls-remote --tags origin 'refs/tags/deploy/*' 2>&1)
+  rc=$?
+
+  if [ $rc -ne 0 ]; then
+    echo "$(stamp) tick: ls-remote failed (exit $rc) — ${raw%%$'\n'*}"
+    sleep "$POLL_SECONDS"
+    continue
+  fi
+
+  versions=$(printf '%s\n' "$raw" | grep -v '\^{}' | awk '{print $2}' | sed -E 's#.*refs/tags/deploy/##' | sort -u)
+
+  pending=""
+  for v in $versions; do
+    [ -n "$v" ] || continue
+    [ "$("$CLAIM_SH" state "$v" 2>/dev/null)" = unclaimed ] && pending="$pending $v"
+  done
+
+  # Every tick leaves a line, including the quiet ones: a fresh timestamp is the only thing that tells
+  # "nothing to deploy" apart from "the loop died".
+  echo "$(stamp) tick: $(printf '%s\n' "$versions" | grep -c .) tags,${pending:- none} pending"
+
+  for v in $pending; do
+    if ! "$CLAIM_SH" claim "$v"; then
+      # Lost a race with another watcher, or it was claimed between the state check and here. Either way
+      # it is not ours and never becomes ours.
+      continue
+    fi
+
+    echo "$(stamp) deploy/$v claimed — spawning deploy agent"
+
+    # The child reads the procedure, which tells ITS reader to claim first. It must not: we hold the claim
+    # on its behalf, and its own claim would return exit 1 and stop the deploy it was spawned to do.
+    PROMPT="Read prompts/deploy-commander.md in $PLATFORM_DIR and follow it exactly, for the release deploy/$v.
+
+The claim for $v is ALREADY HELD on your behalf by the watcher that spawned you. Do NOT run
+'scripts/deploy-claim.sh claim $v' — it will refuse, correctly, because the claim is taken, and stopping
+there would abandon a deploy you were started to perform. Everything else in that file applies unchanged,
+including running 'scripts/deploy-claim.sh done $v' once the rollout has succeeded.
+
+Roll it out across every host the plan names, skip the host you are running on, and write the report
+exactly as the procedure specifies."
+
+    raw_log="$DEPLOYS_DIR/$v.child.jsonl"
+
+    # Nothing links a spawned agent to its parent and a child transcript does not last, so the stream is
+    # kept here as it arrives. stderr never enters the pipe: the CLI writes warnings there and one landing
+    # in the stream corrupts the first jq parse.
+    {
+      cd "$PLATFORM_DIR" && claude -p "$PROMPT" \
+        --dangerously-skip-permissions \
+        --output-format=stream-json \
+        --verbose
+    } 2> >(while IFS= read -r l; do echo "  ! $l"; done) \
+      | tee -a "$raw_log" \
+      | jq -r --unbuffered '
+          if .type=="system" and .subtype=="init" then
+            "  · child session " + .session_id
+          elif .type=="assistant" then
+            (.message.content[]? |
+              if .type=="tool_use" then
+                "  ⚙ " + .name + ": " + ((.input.description // .input.command // .input.pattern // (.input | tostring)))
+              elif .type=="text" then
+                "  » " + .text
+              else empty end)
+          elif .type=="user" then
+            (.message.content[]? | select(.type=="tool_result") |
+              "    " + (if (.content|type)=="string" then .content else (.content // [] | map(.text? // "") | join(" ")) end))
+          elif .type=="result" then
+            "  = deploy agent " + .subtype + ", " + (.num_turns|tostring) + " turns, " + (.total_cost_usd|tostring) + " usd"
+          else empty end
+        ' 2>/dev/null
+
+    if [ -f "$DEPLOYS_DIR/$v.done" ]; then
+      echo "$(stamp) deploy/$v SUCCEEDED — recorded, transcript at $raw_log"
+    else
+      # The claim stays held. This is the loop's most important line and the one that used to say
+      # "will retry next poll".
+      echo "$(stamp) deploy/$v FAILED — no .done written. NOT retrying; the claim is held."
+      echo "$(stamp)   transcript: $raw_log"
+      echo "$(stamp)   to allow another attempt, deliberately: rm -rf $DEPLOYS_DIR/$v.claim"
+    fi
+  done
+
+  sleep "$POLL_SECONDS"
+done