diff --git a/docs/ops/historical-provenance-draft.md b/docs/ops/historical-provenance-draft.md
index 52b9e85..686afce 100644
--- a/docs/ops/historical-provenance-draft.md
+++ b/docs/ops/historical-provenance-draft.md
@@ -4,6 +4,12 @@ Status: draft for auditor review. This document is not yet the umbrella
 CivicSuite disclosure and must not be treated as published policy until it lands
 through the authorized CivicSuite documentation path.
 
+Baseline placeholder: the final policy version must name the first attested
+baseline release and date before publication. Expected format:
+`civiccore v0.22.1, released YYYY-MM-DD, is the baseline release under the
+attested provenance model.` Until that value is filled and separately
+authorized, this document remains a draft.
+
 ## Summary
 
 CivicSuite strengthened its release provenance model during the synthetic
@@ -18,10 +24,20 @@ The new model treats tags as release pointers and makes a Sigstore-signed
 must include the attestation, cosign bundle, artifact checksums, evidence bundle
 hashes, and an exact per-repo/per-tag verification command.
 
+This model shift was driven by the CivicSuite synthetic-phase adversarial audit
+contract. The external auditor flagged that the release-page "Verified" signal
+was misleading for release provenance, the development team built a
+fixture-driven gate, the gate surfaced an organization-wide historical baseline
+issue, and the project chose transparent disclosure and forward correction over
+rewriting release history.
+
 ## Historical State
 
 - Historical releases before the baseline date were produced under a weaker
   GitHub-native provenance model.
+- The backfill scan covered CivicSuite release tags across the organization as
+  of 2026-05-04 and found 119 historical releases failing the strengthened
+  gate: 83 lightweight tags and 36 unsigned annotated tag objects.
 - Those releases are not retroactively deleted or rewritten.
 - Current/latest live-surface releases receive additive attestations only after
   per-release authorization.
@@ -41,6 +57,46 @@ A post-baseline release is independently verifiable when:
 - the cosign bundle verifies with the documented issuer and trust roots, and
 - release notes include the exact verification command.
 
+Worked example placeholder for the first attested CivicCore baseline release:
+
+```bash
+cosign verify-blob release-attestation.json \
+  --bundle release-attestation.json.bundle \
+  --certificate-identity "https://github.com/CivicSuite/civiccore/.github/workflows/release.yml@refs/tags/v0.22.1" \
+  --certificate-oidc-issuer https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com
+
+sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS.txt
+python scripts/verify-release-provenance.py v0.22.1 \
+  --repo CivicSuite/civiccore \
+  --attestation release-attestation.json \
+  --bundle release-attestation.json.bundle \
+  --artifacts-dir .
+```
+
+Replace `v0.22.1` with the final baseline tag if the authorized baseline
+release uses a different version.
+
+## Canonical Sources
+
+- Gate implementation:
+  [`civiccore/release_provenance.py`](../../civiccore/release_provenance.py)
+- Thin CLI wrapper:
+  [`scripts/verify-release-provenance.py`](../../scripts/verify-release-provenance.py)
+- Versioned attestation schema:
+  [`docs/ops/release-attestation.schema.json`](release-attestation.schema.json)
+- Adversarial fixture suite:
+  [`tests/fixtures/release_provenance/`](../../tests/fixtures/release_provenance/)
+- Release-signing runbook:
+  [`docs/ops/release-signing.md`](release-signing.md)
+
+## Verification Support
+
+If a procurement reviewer or city IT reviewer cannot verify a post-baseline
+release with the documented commands, report it through
+[`SECURITY.md`](../../SECURITY.md). Treat unverifiable provenance as a release
+verification failure until the project provides a corrected evidence bundle or
+a documented explanation.
+
 ## Audit Interpretation
 
 This disclosure does not minimize the prior state. It records a baseline shift:
diff --git a/docs/ops/release-signing.md b/docs/ops/release-signing.md
index 9b2a5a0..c628825 100644
--- a/docs/ops/release-signing.md
+++ b/docs/ops/release-signing.md
@@ -190,3 +190,23 @@ burden for CivicSuite.
 Historical releases are disclosed honestly rather than mass-deleted. The new
 baseline begins with releases that include Sigstore-signed release attestations
 and exact workflow-identity verification commands.
+
+## Maintainer Environment Hygiene
+
+Maintainer desktops and cloud-synced folders are scratchpads, not audit
+surfaces. Drafts, runbooks, schemas, fixture analyses, defect statements, and
+other artifacts under audit review must live in a CivicSuite repository on a
+branch and move through a verified PR before review. If an artifact is too
+sensitive for a public repository, it must live in an appropriate private
+organization repository with the same verified-merge discipline.
+
+Do not store signing keys, sensitive seed data, realistic PII-shaped mock data,
+or release evidence requiring custody controls in consumer cloud-sync folders.
+Public documentation drafts are not sensitive, but the pattern is still a
+hygiene signal.
+
+Maintainer notes copied from auditor conversations are auditor input, not
+auditor output. Auditor decisions become operative only when explicitly written
+in the chat as directives, approvals, or authorizations. Code, PRs, fixtures,
+and runbooks produced by the development swarm are separate artifact classes
+and must preserve that distinction in the audit trail.