diff --git a/.github/instructions/services.instructions.md b/.github/instructions/services.instructions.md
index 4e19c57..a7f6543 100644
--- a/.github/instructions/services.instructions.md
+++ b/.github/instructions/services.instructions.md
@@ -173,6 +173,16 @@ pages before it. Enforced by `tests/integration/test_pipeline_atomicity.py`; per
 durability is separately enforced by
 `tests/services/test_workflows_reliability.py::TestWorkflowReliability::test_transcribed_page_is_committed_before_next_provider_call_finishes`.
 
+### Stale-reclaim safety
+
+- `WORKER_STALE_JOB_SECONDS` must remain **greater than** `WORKER_PROVIDER_TIMEOUT_SECONDS`; stale
+  recovery must not be able to fire before one provider call can legitimately finish.
+- Long-running multi-page orchestration must refresh job liveness explicitly between intermediate
+  page commits. Do not rely on incidental row updates or provider metadata writes to keep
+  `Job.date_updated` fresh.
+- Enforced by `tests/test_config.py` and
+  `tests/services/test_workflows_reliability.py::TestWorkflowReliability::test_intermediate_page_commit_advances_job_liveness_timestamp`.
+
 ## Contract Alignment
 
 - Treat `docs/` as the active architecture and requirements baseline.
diff --git a/docs/invariant/ai_evidence_and_provenance.md b/docs/invariant/ai_evidence_and_provenance.md
index 88c1ea8..5d844f4 100644
--- a/docs/invariant/ai_evidence_and_provenance.md
+++ b/docs/invariant/ai_evidence_and_provenance.md
@@ -123,6 +123,10 @@ Evaluation should:
 5. Preserve the exact model, endpoint or route, parameters, prompt, source digest, and scoring method for every comparison.
 6. Treat model rankings as corpus- and version-specific, not permanent declarations of a universal “best” model.
 
+The deterministic scorer for these comparisons lives in `src/transcription/benchmarking.py`; it is
+retained as evaluation-policy infrastructure even though application runtime paths do not call it
+directly.
+
 Benchmark material containing family records remains private application data unless explicitly approved for publication.
 
 ## 6. Ownership and Change Policy
diff --git a/src/transcription/benchmarking.py b/src/transcription/benchmarking.py
index c2c3908..2b8bfec 100644
--- a/src/transcription/benchmarking.py
+++ b/src/transcription/benchmarking.py
@@ -1,4 +1,11 @@
-"""Private-corpus benchmark contracts and deterministic text scoring."""
+"""Private-corpus benchmark contracts and deterministic text scoring.
+
+This module is retained as the implementation of the evaluation policy in
+`docs/invariant/ai_evidence_and_provenance.md` §5. Application runtime paths do
+not call it directly, but preserved execution attempts and manually reviewed
+references need a deterministic scorer that remains importable for tests and
+operator tooling.
+"""
 
 from __future__ import annotations