diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index caa4035..4bcd7f0 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -63,3 +63,36 @@ POST /api/minesweeper/start      idempotent; builds the prefix on a cold install
 POST /api/minesweeper/stop
      /api/plugin-ws/minesweeper  the display, as RFB
 ```
+
+## Where this came from
+
+Built first as a standalone directory, `officer-dev/wine-minesweeper`, and folded in here when it became a
+plugin. Two things from that work are worth keeping, because both are judgement calls somebody will
+otherwise make again from scratch.
+
+**Wine came from Ubuntu noble, not the WineHQ repository.** The distribution package is older — 9.0 — and
+that is fine for a 2017 VB6 application. The alternative was adding a third-party apt source, with its key
+and its update cadence, to a machine that runs a bitcoin wallet and a mail store, for a game of Minesweeper.
+If a future version genuinely needs newer wine, that trade is worth revisiting; until then it is not.
+
+**Enabling i386 pulled four krb5 libraries forward** within noble-updates. That was checked before
+installing rather than after: nothing moved near libc, systemd, openssl or postgres. Worth re-checking on
+any host where `dpkg --add-architecture i386` is new, since it is the one step here that changes how the
+whole machine resolves packages and is never undone by uninstalling the plugin.
+
+### The original verification baseline
+
+From the standalone build, on Ubuntu noble with wine 9.0. Useful as a comparison when something feels wrong
+rather than as a test to run:
+
+- The game launches in about a second and draws the classic beginner board at **152x214**.
+- A synthetic `xdotool` click opens a region and starts the timer — so **input reaches the game**, which is
+  the part that matters for a playable stream and the part a screenshot cannot tell you.
+- x11vnc completes an **RFB 003.008** handshake and reports an 800x600 32bpp framebuffer.
+- Cold start, display through to game window, in under two seconds. That excludes building the prefix,
+  which happens once and takes minutes.
+
+The shell prototype that ran all this (`bin/session.sh`) is not kept. Everything it knew — waiting for a
+usable display rather than a live pid, parking the window at the origin, and clearing the whole wine
+process family on stop — is in `sidecar/session.ts`, with the reasoning attached to the code that depends
+on it.