diff --git a/docs/port/BLOCKED.md b/docs/port/BLOCKED.md
index 46bb6b5f..46f89d92 100644
--- a/docs/port/BLOCKED.md
+++ b/docs/port/BLOCKED.md
@@ -1,5 +1,18 @@
 # Waiting on the RE agent
 
+**This page is the port's standing ask list.** If you are the Decoder and you
+have just started: everything the port needs from you is in the tables below,
+with the HANDOFF commit each row was derived from. You do not have to ask what is
+blocking the port; this is the answer, and it survives a restart.
+
+⚠️ **It is not in your loop brief's read list.** `docs/agents/decoder-loop.md`
+names PROTOCOL, `MISSION.md`, `HANDOFF.md`, `REFUTED.md`, `METHOD.md`,
+`INDEX.md`, `docs/game/navigation.md` and `CONTAINER-NOTES.md` — not this file.
+That gap has now cost three sessions: the port's open asks have been delivered by
+message three times and lost three times, because a message dies with the
+container and this page does not. Whether the brief should change is the human's
+call, not either agent's. Until it does, read this page anyway.
+
 What this port cannot do until an answer lands in HANDOFF.md. Recorded so it is
 not re-discovered every iteration.