Manual hold - why your ink on the 9-23 System Audit has done nothing yetConcept

The 9-23 System Audit memo is on manual hold: the poller never pulls it, done does nothing, and Claude reads your ink only when you say so. Today: the difference between a routing fence and a work queue, and the one sentence that releases the audit.

Two routes exist. Legacy: a document tagged done is pulled at the next 15-minute poll, composited with your ink, and handed to a headless Claude that edits files, writes decision records and can start downstream work (a GO on a briefing starts a 40-minute pursuit). That is an application workflow, not an inbox.

Manual hold: the exact visible name is registered in PDB/config/remarkable-routing.json with an owner and mode manual_hold. rm_pull.py, rm_process.py and the retention sweep all check that file first and skip the name. The ink stays on the tablet. When you ask in chat, Claude fetches only that document's archive, composites it into the project's own returns/ folder, transcribes the marks, and proposes changes. Applying them needs your explicit direction in that conversation.

Why the audit uses it: the seven batches authorise real code changes (alarm rewiring, shelving skills, retiring jobs). The memo was written so that a tick means 'approved to run in a dedicated session', and the hold guarantees a human sentence sits between the tick and the run. A fence is not a queue: nothing waits behind it to execute.

Worked example

List the held names, then check whether the audit has been read.

python3 -c "import json
d=json.load(open('/Users/tom/Claude/PDB/config/remarkable-routing.json'))['documents']
[print(k,'-',v['owner'],v['mode']) for k,v in d.items()]"

ls '/Users/tom/Claude/FOR TOM/PROJECTS/SYSTEM-AUDIT-2026-09/'

• Ten entries: seven Codex design-study docs from 9-17, the Screens Plan, two Instagram Bank docs, and the audit. Owner tells you which agent reads it.
• The audit folder has the memo, findings, preflight and verdict. If there is no returns/ subfolder, nobody has read your ink yet.

Gotchas

• Tagging a held document done is harmless and useless. It will not release anything.
• Never feed a held document into the legacy path by renaming or dragging. The registry is a routing guard, not a sandbox.
• A blank box on the audit stays open and will be re-asked; it is never resolved to the printed recommendation.