diff --git a/docs/fleettools/AGENT-BOOTSTRAP.md b/docs/fleettools/AGENT-BOOTSTRAP.md
index d651c89..90bedc9 100644
--- a/docs/fleettools/AGENT-BOOTSTRAP.md
+++ b/docs/fleettools/AGENT-BOOTSTRAP.md
@@ -40,6 +40,11 @@ contract. Fetch it rather than trusting a transcription.
   control, and a stated sensitivity floor.
 - **Absence of a signal is not a safe reading of it.** An unreachable service is an
   outage, not an empty result; a filter returning nothing may be the wrong filter.
+- **Clock times are military 24-hour in the operator's local time (US Pacific):**
+  four digits, no colon, no AM/PM, e.g. `0946`, `1730`, `0005`. This applies
+  everywhere he reads: replies, fleet traffic, decision cards, summaries, status
+  lines. Convert UTC before you write it, and give UTC only when he asks. Durations
+  ("four minutes") are not clock times. Operator directive, 2026-09-24.
 
 ## Deeper context