diff --git a/docs/re/METHOD.md b/docs/re/METHOD.md
index 2448d791..5ef1518c 100644
--- a/docs/re/METHOD.md
+++ b/docs/re/METHOD.md
@@ -494,6 +494,18 @@ agent's loop prompt, i.e. nowhere durable. See [`README.md`](README.md) for the
   **author** a value that is decoded. **When sweeping for stale text, rank
   instructions above descriptions**: a wrong description misleads a reader, a wrong
   instruction produces a wrong *result* that looks like evidence.
+  📌 **And rank SILENT instructions above LOUD ones** (`sylpheed-port`'s
+  refinement, from finding all of theirs were the loud kind): a wrong path errors
+  out and announces itself; **an inert environment variable returns a clean, wrong
+  result**. Only the silent kind manufactures evidence. ⚠️ The silent surface is
+  enumerable and therefore **sweepable rather than sampleable** — every env var the
+  docs name, checked against the code. Doing that found `SYLPHEED_KF_TIME_SHIFT`
+  still live in **five** files after I had fixed one, including a **results-table
+  row** and an instruction in `HANDOFF.md`, plus a live gate under a *different
+  name* — `SYLPHEED_KF_TIME_LEGACY`, read at `ui_layout.rs:595` — that the docs
+  never pointed at. ⚠️ Beware the proxy: absent-from-code also flags
+  `SYLPHEED_DISC`, `XENIA_SRC` and `SYLPH_ISO`, container paths the brief sets and
+  no code reads. Absent-from-code is necessary, not sufficient.
   📌 And `sylpheed-port`'s generalisation of the heading rule: **an index is an
   amplifier.** Anything that republishes headings — a generated table of contents,
   a summary, `INDEX.md`'s H1-and-Status table — multiplies whatever the heading