diff --git a/skills/cross-model-review/SKILL.md b/skills/cross-model-review/SKILL.md
index 40f13fe..d1f1fb1 100644
--- a/skills/cross-model-review/SKILL.md
+++ b/skills/cross-model-review/SKILL.md
@@ -105,6 +105,29 @@ objection is not re-litigated — but a *reproduced* correctness or safety defec
 stays must-fix (§3 triage): it may be deferred only with the owner's explicit
 acceptance, never closed by the reviewers on their own.
 
+**Pre-existing is a disposition you establish, not assume — reproduce the
+finding on the merge-base too.** On a behavior-preserving refactor branch a
+*reproduced* defect can still be one the branch faithfully carried over from
+master, not one it introduced; recording it against the branch is a false
+regression that blocks a clean refactor for a fault it did not create. Before
+you count a reproduced finding as the branch's defect, re-run it against the
+merge-base: present on both → `pre-existing-tracked`, spun off as its own
+fix, never bloating the refactor; gone on master and live on the branch → a real
+regression this branch owns. Reviewers do not see master (§2 packet is your
+inlined lines), so this classification is yours to make, not theirs — a
+reviewer's severity label ("not merge-ready", "CRITICAL") is a claim about
+the code in front of it, blind to whether the branch introduced the behavior.
+And applicability is itself a **runtime/deployment-state** question, not a
+source one: a migration or identifier case-collision finding that no live
+data can trigger — empty store, writer never deployed — is an irreproducible
+false positive (§4), not a regression this branch owns. Reproduce against
+what actually shipped (query the collection, check the deploy), not synthetic
+data the bug reproduces on but the running system never holds.
+neg: filing a reviewer's "P1, not merge-ready" against a refactor for a quirk
+that reproduces identically on the merge-base — the review still pays off (spin
+the quirk off as its own fix), but the branch is clean and the label was
+baseline-blind.
+
 **A proposed fix is a suggestion, not a patch.** Reproducing a finding
 licenses the finding, not its remedy — these are separate judgments, and a
 reviewer writes the remedy against only the lines you inlined (§2), so a real
@@ -232,6 +255,16 @@ the reason recorded. The landed side is verifiable in-repo (PR #32's
 commits); the held side was never pushed, so the comparison itself is
 contributor-reported — the rule ships with an in-body `unprobed` marker
 per the README covenant's second branch.
+The §3 baseline-classification and runtime-state adjudication rules
+(2026-07-24) are class-distilled from a mining pass over the owner's own
+sessions (no code taken): a moira-web behavior-preserving refactor where
+codex's "not merge-ready" and agy's "CRITICAL" both dissolved under
+reproduction as pre-existing master behaviors the branch faithfully preserved
+(0 regressions, 4 pre-existing quirks spun off), and a TG-bot review where
+codex's identifier-migration and case-collision findings were non-applicable
+because the store was empty and the writer had never deployed. The lesson
+is the general one — pre-existing-vs-regression is a baseline diff, and
+applicability is a runtime-state question — not the specific findings.
 Re-verify
 line: model families, CLI availability, "flagship" identity, and effort tiers
 are volatile — re-discover at session time; never trust a model name or tier