diff --git a/FABRIC-3.5.md b/FABRIC-3.5.md
index c9db8d53..e8c638bd 100644
--- a/FABRIC-3.5.md
+++ b/FABRIC-3.5.md
@@ -1,9 +1,42 @@
 # FABRIC-3.5.md — the Tripod/kernel reshuffle
 
-**Status:** Standalone working document, opened 2026-09-18 by direct instruction ("we write
-this in `FABRIC-3.5.md` as its own document, it's this important"). Topic: **relocating Hermes
-into the kernel, reconstituting the Tripod as Hera/Artemis/Hestia, generalizing `BIRTH`, and
-adopting one fleet-wide failure/recovery ladder.**
+**Status: DESIGN PHASE CLOSED as of 2026-09-19, by direct instruction ("close the document for
+now"). Not yet archival.**
+
+**What is closed, and what is deliberately not.** Every design question this document opened is
+ruled — see §XXX.7. **No code has been written and no code is authorized.** The execution
+sequence (§XXVI.6, as amended by §XXX.7) is untouched: the surgical strip, the build, the
+Isabelle/HOL pass, the documentation sweep, the SBOM, the merge to `master`, and the `v2.1.0`
+tag all remain ahead.
+
+**This is therefore a narrower close than §XXVI.5 specified**, and the difference is stated
+rather than glossed. §XXVI.5 ruled that this document closes *when the tag exists*, in
+`FABRIC-2.md`'s CLOSED/ARCHIVAL form, naming the tag it closed at. **The tag does not exist**,
+so claiming that close would be a label running ahead of the real state — the exact error
+`FABRIC-3.md` §I.2 corrected when it rolled `LITHOS_VERSION` back, and the same standard §XXIX
+applied to the LTS question. **The archival close specified by §XXVI.5 still stands and still
+happens at `v2.1.0`.** This header is the provisional one the instruction's own "for now" asks
+for.
+
+**Nothing is carried forward and no successor is created.** As §XXVI.5 establishes, this
+document is not part of the `FABRIC-0 → -1 → -2 → -3` chain, so closing it hands nothing to a
+successor. **`FABRIC-3.md` remains open, living and authoritative for its own topic** (bare
+metal boot); nothing here supersedes it. The live artifact from this document is its punch list
+(§XXVI.6 / §XXX.7) — that, not this header, is what the build works from.
+
+**Open by design, not by omission:** items 10–17 of §XXVI.6 are execution, not decisions.
+Three things recorded here are explicitly *outside* this reshuffle and still need their own
+authorization — the `.claude/CLAUDE.md`/`MANIFEST.md` documentation reconciliation (§XXVI.1),
+the `src/*.c.bak` hygiene question (§XXII.5), and the stray `refs/heads/v2.0.1` branch and
+PR #1 (§XXVI.4).
+
+---
+
+**Topic and original framing, as opened.** Standalone working document, opened 2026-09-18 by
+direct instruction ("we write this in `FABRIC-3.5.md` as its own document, it's this
+important"). Topic: **relocating Hermes into the kernel, reconstituting the Tripod as
+Hera/Artemis/Hestia, generalizing `BIRTH`, and adopting one fleet-wide failure/recovery
+ladder.**
 
 **Why 3.5 and not 4, and why not a section of 3.** `FABRIC-4.md` is explicitly the
 lower-discipline scratchpad for theory-stage ideas "caught early... often missing a stated