diff --git a/docs/agent-waits.md b/docs/agent-waits.md
index bb29f3d9..14929d2b 100644
--- a/docs/agent-waits.md
+++ b/docs/agent-waits.md
@@ -99,6 +99,39 @@ is the intuitive design and its expense is invisible, which is why it needs sayi
 
 ---
 
+## Make firing mean something
+
+The rest of this file is about how to wait cheaply. This section is about the other half, and it is the one
+that decides whether a fleet of these is affordable.
+
+**Most waits find nothing, almost always.** A daily release check answers "no" 360 days a year. A branch
+watcher wakes on every push, including everyone else's. So the number that matters is not the cost of a
+useful wake — it is the cost of a useless one, multiplied by how many there will be.
+
+The fix is not a cheaper wake. It is to **push the relevance test into the wait condition**, so that firing
+already implies relevance:
+
+- **Do not** wait on "a push", then wake and check whether it carries a `COMMS/<branch>/NN-*.md`. Wait on a
+  push *that contains one* — a filename test the shell can do with no model at all.
+- **Do not** wait on "the releases page changed", then wake and read it. Wait on "the version string differs
+  from my cursor" — a string compare.
+
+Three tiers, and almost everything should die at the first:
+
+| tier | cost | for |
+|---|---|---|
+| **shell condition** | zero | anything expressible as a filename, a diff, a version, a status |
+| **fresh minimal agent** | one small cold read | relevance genuinely needs judgement, but not history |
+| **escalate with real context** | a full read of a long session | the event has to be interpreted against what came before |
+
+A session fork that inherits context but returns nothing to it (Claude Code's `/btw`) is tier two done well.
+It is still a context read, so it is the fallback when a shell test cannot express relevance — not the
+default.
+
+**Corollary for the platform:** a wait's condition should be part of its declaration, not something the agent
+evaluates after waking. `wait for: push to <branch> touching COMMS/**` is a cheaper and more honest thing to
+build than `wait for: push` plus an agent that decides.
+
 ## The contract a wait must honour
 
 Specification. None of this is built yet.