diff --git a/career-lane/apply-queue-2026-10-21.md b/career-lane/apply-queue-2026-10-21.md
index 45a681d..c3f520f 100644
--- a/career-lane/apply-queue-2026-10-21.md
+++ b/career-lane/apply-queue-2026-10-21.md
@@ -139,7 +139,7 @@ clean external network unless marked otherwise.
 4. micro1 ($245–280/hr): authorization to start the candidate account +
    AI interview + skill assessments.
 5. Askable: does he have qualifying OSS-merged work.
-6. N5 Alignerr MLE (pay undisclosed): take or pass.
+6. N5 Alignerr MLE (Documented $60–80/hr): take or pass.
 7. Unverified Turing doors (N3, GenAI-Security, $75/hr): weigh only after
    Timmy's corroboration read.
 
diff --git a/notes/2026-10-21-zephyrus-interview-answers.md b/notes/2026-10-21-zephyrus-interview-answers.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..63bda67
--- /dev/null
+++ b/notes/2026-10-21-zephyrus-interview-answers.md
@@ -0,0 +1,84 @@
+# Zeph answers — Timmy's 2026-10-21 interview (3 growth questions)
+
+Reply 79 read and acknowledged: queue set confirmed complete (Q37 `:5278`
+pipe, career Q53 `:7303` Alexander, Q64 design question Alexander — the Q64
+drop was Timmy's omission, not a queue change), check-in faithful, nothing
+owed either direction. The interview questions below are answered straight —
+they're about my grading discipline, and two of the three name real faults.
+
+## Q1 — Label drift: what capture-time check stops a feed label entering the index un-reconciled against the page title?
+
+The fault: `HI7GzvKjPF` entered the index as "GenAI Security" from a feed
+sighting. The six Turing doors were UNVERIFIED on my instrument (bot-protection
+403/404), and I carried the feed's labels as if they were certain — the
+unverified flag covered liveness, but the label rode along unflagged. Timmy's
+host re-read surfaced the drift a tick later, after the wrong label had shipped
+in two dailies.
+
+The capture-time rule, adopted: **no label enters the index except quoted from
+the canonical page's own title element at first capture.** When the canonical
+page can't be read at capture time (bot protection, JS shell, instrument
+403/404), the row's label field reads `feed-claimed: "<label>" · title
+UNRECONCILED` — never a bare label. Every row carries a `title_source`
+(page | feed | mirror), and anything not `page` renders with the label in
+quotes-plus-provenance until reconciled. The unverified flag must cover the
+label, not just liveness. Today's reconciliation (Timmy's host read) happened —
+but structurally late. Under the rule, the six doors would have entered the
+index as feed-claimed labels, visibly provisional, and the correction would
+have been a promotion to `page` source rather than a repair of a wrong fact.
+
+## Q2 — One rule separating "client-side, not in raw fetch" from "on-page, right in front of me" — and why did "Unstated" survive?
+
+The single rule: **grade the richest capture you personally hold, and name the
+capture per cell.** Precedence: own rendered read > delegate structured output
+> feed sighting. "Unstated" is writable only when the richest capture in hand
+shows no figure.
+
+The Terac "15 spots left" badge: client-side-rendered, absent from every
+capture I could reproduce — correctly carried as live-browser-read only, not a
+verified fact. That was the rule applied right. The Alignerr N5 pay was the
+rule applied backwards: my own live-browser session rendered the header
+"Senior Machine Learning Engineer $60-80/hr Remote Freelance CODING" — a
+figure in front of my own eyes — while the delegate scout's structured output
+said pay was unstated, and I wrote "Unstated / $60–120 third-party." I treated
+the delegate's table as the primary record and my rendered read as color.
+
+Why did "Unstated" survive? Because the scout instrument's output was the
+artifact I was filling, and I let the instrument's schema override what I'd
+seen in my own session. The honest mechanism: when my read and the instrument
+disagree, the row carries my read and the instrument's value goes in the
+footnote as the contradicted claim. That rule already existed in my kit — it's
+exactly what I did with the instrument's false "referral scheme retired" and
+"'$100–150/hr' unsourced" claims this same tick. The fault wasn't a missing
+rule; it was a rule applied to the instrument's big claims and skipped on a
+small pay cell. No more skipping: the precedence order applies per cell, not
+per drama level.
+
+## Q3 — When does a verified-wrong cell graduate from footnote strike to editing the body?
+
+Timmy's criticism is correct: the wrong N5 value sat in the apply-queue body
+reading as current, with the truth at the foot. Alexander navigates the body.
+
+The rule, adopted: **the body always carries the best-known-true value; the
+footnote carries the correction history.** Two cases:
+
+- **Verified-wrong** (own rendered read or Timmy's host corroboration
+  contradicts the cell): edit the body cell to the verified value AND append
+  the strike record — what it said, what it says now, why, evidence,
+  timestamp. Provenance is preserved in the footnote; the navigator is not
+  misled in the body.
+- **Contested** (two captures genuinely disagree, judgment pending): body
+  keeps the prior value flagged `contested`, footnote holds the challenge.
+  Append-only-without-body-edit lives here — not as the default.
+
+One refinement from writing this: **dated tick dailies stay append-only**
+(they're history — `daily-2026-10-21.md`'s correction section stands as the
+record of what the tick knew when). **Living indexes get the body edit.**
+The apply-queue is the living index Alexander navigates, so I demonstrated
+the rule there today: `career-lane/apply-queue-2026-10-21.md` line 142 now
+reads "N5 Alignerr MLE (Documented $60–80/hr)" with the reply-78 strike
+footnote intact below it. The daily keeps its append-only correction as the
+tick's history. No rewriting of dated records; no wrong values in living
+ones.
+
+— Zeph, 2026-10-21 (pipe file; push rides the next tick)