diff --git a/CONTRIBUTING.md b/CONTRIBUTING.md
index 1bcd82f..4566303 100644
--- a/CONTRIBUTING.md
+++ b/CONTRIBUTING.md
@@ -88,17 +88,26 @@ Conventional Commit messages; imperative, lowercase subjects of 50 characters or
 
 ## Releasing
 
-This section is the maintainer's; it needs push access to the tag and credentials on two registries. A tag is the whole trigger. `release.yml` runs on `v*.*.*` and nothing else, so a branch push cannot publish by accident, and there is no environment gate to catch a mistake — pushing the tag is the decision.
+This section is the maintainer's; it needs push access to the tag. Both registries authorize through trusted publishing, so the workflow mints its own short-lived token and there is no registry credential to hold here or to have locally. A tag is the whole trigger. `release.yml` runs on `v*.*.*` and nothing else, so a branch push cannot publish by accident, and there is no environment gate to catch a mistake — pushing the tag is the decision.
 
 ```bash
 make bump VERSION=X.Y.Z # then commit what it wrote
 make check
+git status --short      # anything listed has to be committed before the tag
+# open a pull request and let it merge, then tag the commit that landed:
+git fetch origin && git switch main && git merge --ff-only origin/main
 git tag -s vX.Y.Z -m 'vX.Y.Z'
 git push origin vX.Y.Z
 ```
 
+The pull request is not skippable here, and squash is the reason. `main` takes no direct pushes, and a squash merge replaces the commit the bump was made on, so a tag applied before the merge names a commit that never reaches `main` -- `v0.4.0` points at `build: bump the version to 0.4.0 (#12)`, which is the squashed one. Tagging what landed is the only order that leaves the tag on an ancestor of `main`.
+
 `-s` rather than `-a`. `commit.gpgsign` is on but `tag.gpgsign` is not, so an annotated tag is unsigned by default, which would leave the one object asserting "this commit is publishable" as the only unsigned thing in the repository.
 
+The tag is not the end of the checking. `release.yml`'s `verify` job re-runs both suites and the differential fuzzer at the tagged commit, and `binaries`, `pypi` and `crates` all wait on it, so a red `verify` publishes nothing. It builds and tests the Rust with `--locked`, which `make check` does not, so a `Cargo.lock` that disagrees with `Cargo.toml` passes locally and fails there -- and by then the tag is frozen, so the fix is the next patch number rather than a retag. `uv run` is not given `--locked` in that job, so only the Cargo side carries this hazard.
+
+One gate sits after the publishes, and it is the only one there: `alias` waits on `smoke`, so a red smoke run leaves `@v0` pointing at the previous release while the version itself has already shipped. Nothing else in the flow waits on it, which is the right way round -- moving a tag is reversible and a publish is not.
+
 `make bump` moves every version pin at once, and writes nothing at all if it cannot find one of them. Six files carry the number and they are not alike: the two manifests, the two lockfiles derived from them, the readme snippets a consumer copies, and the `uses:` pin in `unwrap-propose.yml` that the reusable workflow runs. Naming a subset of that list here is what let `v0.1.1` ship with the propose pin a release behind, against the comment directly above it, so the list lives in `scripts/bump_version.py` where it runs rather than in this sentence where it rotted. The tag matches what the bump wrote.
 
 Registry publication is irreversible: a version cannot be re-uploaded and a name cannot be reused, so `cargo publish --dry-run` and `twine check` are worth running before the tag rather than discovering a packaging error after the number is spent. If one registry job succeeds and the other fails, retagging will not recover the consumed version — move to the next patch. It is refused as well as useless: a ruleset on all three repositories freezes `refs/tags/v*.*.*` against update and deletion, with no bypass for anybody, so a version tag is written once. `v0` does not match that pattern and is the one tag the release flow moves. A second ruleset, over `refs/tags/v*`, stops any of them being deleted, `v0` included: moving is the only thing the alias should be able to do, and before that rule existed it was the least protected ref here. Turning the rule off is the only way past it, which is the point — that is a deliberate and visible act rather than something a `--force` does quietly.