diff --git a/plugins/guardrails/.claude-plugin/plugin.json b/plugins/guardrails/.claude-plugin/plugin.json
index 68e9dad03..584483bdf 100644
--- a/plugins/guardrails/.claude-plugin/plugin.json
+++ b/plugins/guardrails/.claude-plugin/plugin.json
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 {
   "$schema": "https://json.schemastore.org/claude-code-plugin-manifest.json",
   "name": "guardrails",
-  "version": "0.9.3",
+  "version": "0.9.4",
   "description": "Eight safety guards that block secret/credential writes, hardcoded machine-specific paths, git hook-bypass attempts, irreversible git operations (force-push, reset --hard, worktree-wide checkout/restore discards), Bash file-write workarounds that circumvent Write/Edit hooks, (advisory) hallucinated CLI flags, (advisory) un-throttled Workflow fan-out that risks burst 529s, and (advisory) direct git commit/gh pr create calls bypassing this marketplace's own commit/pull-request skills — each independently toggleable.",
   "author": {
     "name": "Melodic Software",
diff --git a/plugins/guardrails/CHANGELOG.md b/plugins/guardrails/CHANGELOG.md
index bf12d1ee1..41dcebd52 100644
--- a/plugins/guardrails/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/plugins/guardrails/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -3,6 +3,25 @@
 All notable changes to the `guardrails` plugin are documented here. Format follows
 [Keep a Changelog](https://keepachangelog.com/en/1.1.0/); this plugin uses semantic versioning.
 
+## [0.9.4]
+
+### Fixed
+
+- **`cli-flag-verify` scans only the content the tool call wrote, never the whole file
+  from disk.** The PostToolUse check re-read the entire edited file, so any edit to a
+  file already containing an unrecognized flag elsewhere re-fired the advisory about
+  lines the edit never touched. The hook now scans the tool payload — an Edit's
+  changed hunk, a Write's full content (a PostToolUse Write payload cannot distinguish
+  a new file from an overwrite, so whole-content is the closest the payload allows) —
+  per the hook-precision convention's diff-scoping rule. Repro-first: the
+  pre-existing-flag stay-quiet case fails against the prior hook and passes now, with
+  a hunk-introduced-flag MUST-FIRE counterpart. Markdown fence state is derived from
+  the hunk alone — a fence-straddling edit can misclassify in either direction, the
+  accepted trade of hunk scoping. A partial-replacement edit whose hunk is a bare
+  flag fragment (no binary in the changed region) reconstructs bounded on-disk
+  context — the lines carrying the hunk's flag tokens — so a swapped-in unknown flag
+  still fires, while a pre-existing unrelated flag sharing that line stays quiet.
+
 ## [0.9.3]
 
 ### Changed
diff --git a/plugins/guardrails/hooks/cli-flag-verify.sh b/plugins/guardrails/hooks/cli-flag-verify.sh
index 3d196b06d..fa1047028 100755
--- a/plugins/guardrails/hooks/cli-flag-verify.sh
+++ b/plugins/guardrails/hooks/cli-flag-verify.sh
@@ -59,6 +59,22 @@ case "$FILE" in
 *) exit 0 ;;
 esac
 
+# Diff-scope: verify only the content THIS tool call wrote, never re-read the
+# whole file from disk. An Edit's pre-existing lines outside the changed hunk are
+# not this call's claims; scanning the whole file re-flags an unknown flag on
+# every later unrelated edit. Edit -> the changed hunk (new_string); Write -> the
+# full payload content (a PostToolUse Write payload cannot distinguish a new file
+# from an overwrite, so "whole-file only for new files" degrades to whole-content
+# here — still the payload, never disk). The live matcher is Write|Edit; any
+# other tool carries nothing this call wrote that we can scope a scan to.
+TOOL=$(printf '%s' "$INPUT" | jq -r '.tool_name // empty' 2>/dev/null | tr -d '\r')
+case "$TOOL" in
+Edit) SCAN_CONTENT=$(printf '%s' "$INPUT" | jq -r '.tool_input.new_string // empty' 2>/dev/null | tr -d '\r') ;;
+Write) SCAN_CONTENT=$(printf '%s' "$INPUT" | jq -r '.tool_input.content // empty' 2>/dev/null | tr -d '\r') ;;
+*) exit 0 ;;
+esac
+[[ -n "$SCAN_CONTENT" ]] || exit 0
+
 [[ -x "$VERIFIER" ]] || exit 0 # Verifier not present — fail open, don't block
 
 # Repo root for telemetry data.file + relative sink resolution (file-anchored).
@@ -93,30 +109,40 @@ is_skipped() {
   return 1
 }
 
-# Emit candidate command fragments (one per line) from the file.
+# Emit candidate command fragments (one per line) from the scanned payload
+# content ($SCAN_CONTENT — the changed hunk for Edit, full content for Write).
 #   - Markdown: scan CODE only — inline-code spans (one combined grep, then
 #     strip the delimiting backticks) + fenced code-block bodies. Fenced content
 #     carries no inline backticks, so the inline grep naturally excludes it.
 #   - Shell/PowerShell: every line is code.
+# Fence state is derived from the hunk alone, so a fence-straddling markdown edit
+# can misclassify in EITHER direction (a hunk inside a block whose ``` markers
+# fall outside it reads as prose and is under-scanned; a hunk that opens with a
+# closing ``` can over-scan). The convention trades this whole-file context away
+# for diff-scope precision; this fence-straddling residual is accepted, not
+# reconstructed. A distinct residual — an Edit hunk that is a bare flag fragment
+# with no binary in the changed region — IS recovered downstream by
+# reconstruct_partial_edit, which pulls bounded on-disk context so a swapped-in
+# unknown flag is not missed.
 emit_fragments() {
   if [[ "$IS_MD" == "true" ]]; then
     # Inline-code spans (strip the delimiting backticks).
     # shellcheck disable=SC2016  # backticks are literal ERE/sed data, not expansions
-    grep -oE '`[^`]+`' "$FILE" 2>/dev/null | sed -E 's/^`+//; s/`+$//'
+    printf '%s' "$SCAN_CONTENT" | grep -oE '`[^`]+`' 2>/dev/null | sed -E 's/^`+//; s/`+$//'
     # Fenced code-block bodies, skipping in-fence comment lines (a backtick-
     # wrapped example inside a `#` comment would otherwise split into a segment).
-    awk '
+    printf '%s' "$SCAN_CONTENT" | awk '
       /^[[:space:]]*```/ { f = !f; next }
       /^[[:space:]]*~~~/ { f = !f; next }
       f && $0 !~ /^[[:space:]]*#/ { print }
-    ' "$FILE" 2>/dev/null
+    ' 2>/dev/null
   else
     # Shell/PowerShell: every non-comment line is code. Drop full-line comments
     # BEFORE separator-splitting — otherwise a backtick-wrapped CLI example in a
     # comment is split on its backticks into a spurious bin-led command segment
     # (the comment's leading `#` lands in a different segment). `|| true`: grep
     # exits 1 when every line is a comment.
-    grep -vE '^[[:space:]]*#' "$FILE" 2>/dev/null || true
+    printf '%s' "$SCAN_CONTENT" | grep -vE '^[[:space:]]*#' 2>/dev/null || true
   fi
 }
 
@@ -226,6 +252,55 @@ extract_candidates() {
 
 extract_candidates
 
+# Partial-replacement context reconstruction (Edit only). When an Edit's hunk is
+# a bare flag fragment — a flag token swapped in with no binary/subcommand in the
+# changed region — the diff-scoped scan finds no command candidate and would
+# silently miss a genuinely-introduced unknown flag. Recover bounded context:
+# pull from the on-disk file only the lines carrying one of the hunk's flag
+# tokens (the edit has already been applied by PostToolUse time, so the swapped-in
+# flag is on disk), scan those, and keep only candidates whose flag appears in the
+# hunk. The flag-token filter is what preserves the diff-scope contract: a
+# pre-existing unrelated flag sharing one of those lines never re-fires. The
+# anchor is the flag token, not the line — a bare-flag hunk carries no positional
+# information — so a hunk flag that also occurs on an untouched line is scanned
+# there too; only a DIFFERENT pre-existing flag is excluded.
+reconstruct_partial_edit() {
+  [[ "$TOOL" == "Edit" && -f "$FILE" ]] || return 0
+  # Trigger only when the hunk produced no command candidate; a full-command hunk
+  # already scans correctly and must not re-scan from disk.
+  ((${#CANDIDATES[@]} == 0)) || return 0
+  local -a hunk_flags=()
+  mapfile -t hunk_flags < <(
+    printf '%s' "$SCAN_CONTENT" |
+      grep -oE '(^|[[:space:]])--?[A-Za-z0-9][A-Za-z0-9-]*' 2>/dev/null |
+      sed -E 's/^[[:space:]]*//' | sort -u
+  )
+  ((${#hunk_flags[@]})) || return 0
+  local tok ctx="" lines
+  for tok in "${hunk_flags[@]}"; do
+    lines=$(grep -F -- "$tok" "$FILE" 2>/dev/null)
+    [[ -n "$lines" ]] && ctx+="$lines"$'\n'
+  done
+  ctx=$(printf '%s' "$ctx" | grep -vE '^[[:space:]]*$' | head -20)
+  [[ -n "$ctx" ]] || return 0
+  SCAN_CONTENT="$ctx"
+  extract_candidates
+  local key flag t keep
+  for key in "${!CANDIDATES[@]}"; do
+    flag="${key##*|}"
+    keep=0
+    for t in "${hunk_flags[@]}"; do
+      [[ "$flag" == "$t" ]] && {
+        keep=1
+        break
+      }
+    done
+    ((keep)) || unset 'CANDIDATES[$key]'
+  done
+}
+
+reconstruct_partial_edit
+
 # Verify each unique (bin, chain, flag). Collect failures (keys, formatted later).
 FAILURES=()
 for key in "${!CANDIDATES[@]}"; do
diff --git a/plugins/guardrails/hooks/cli-flag-verify.test.sh b/plugins/guardrails/hooks/cli-flag-verify.test.sh
index 05ba0e8a1..3bff511fc 100755
--- a/plugins/guardrails/hooks/cli-flag-verify.test.sh
+++ b/plugins/guardrails/hooks/cli-flag-verify.test.sh
@@ -46,6 +46,11 @@ chmod +x "$FAKE_BIN_DIR/faketool"
 
 # run_fake: invoke the hook with faketool as the only scanned bin and an
 # isolated per-case verifier cache so a stale 24h --help cache never leaks.
+# Models a Write: the content goes into the payload's `content` (what the hook
+# now scans) AND to disk (so the file existence + extension checks pass). Keeping
+# disk == payload means the pre-fix hook — which read the file — scans the same
+# bytes, so this conversion is behavior-preserving and every existing case stays
+# green across the diff-scope fix.
 run_fake() {
   local content="$1" ext="${2:-sh}"
   local case_dir="$TEST_TMPDIR/fake-$((PASS + FAIL + 1))"
@@ -56,7 +61,24 @@ run_fake() {
     CLAUDE_PLUGIN_OPTION_CLI_FLAG_VERIFY_BINS=faketool \
     LOCALAPPDATA="$case_dir/cache" \
     XDG_CACHE_HOME="$case_dir/cache" \
-    bash "$HOOK" <<<"$(MSYS_NO_PATHCONV=1 jq -n --arg fp "$target" '{tool_input:{file_path:$fp}}')" 2>&1
+    bash "$HOOK" <<<"$(MSYS_NO_PATHCONV=1 jq -n --arg fp "$target" --arg c "$content" '{tool_name:"Write",tool_input:{file_path:$fp,content:$c}}')" 2>&1
+}
+
+# run_edit <disk-body> <new-hunk> [ext]: models an Edit — the file on disk
+# carries <disk-body> (pre-existing lines), the payload's new_string is the
+# changed hunk. The hook must scan ONLY the hunk, never the disk body. Isolates
+# the diff-scope contract: disk and payload deliberately differ.
+run_edit() {
+  local disk="$1" hunk="$2" ext="${3:-sh}"
+  local case_dir="$TEST_TMPDIR/edit-$((PASS + FAIL + 1))"
+  mkdir -p "$case_dir/cache"
+  local target="$case_dir/target.$ext"
+  printf '%s\n' "$disk" >"$target"
+  PATH="$FAKE_BIN_DIR:$PATH" \
+    CLAUDE_PLUGIN_OPTION_CLI_FLAG_VERIFY_BINS=faketool \
+    LOCALAPPDATA="$case_dir/cache" \
+    XDG_CACHE_HOME="$case_dir/cache" \
+    bash "$HOOK" <<<"$(MSYS_NO_PATHCONV=1 jq -n --arg fp "$target" --arg s "$hunk" '{tool_name:"Edit",tool_input:{file_path:$fp,new_string:$s}}')" 2>&1
 }
 
 OUT=$(run_fake 'faketool sub --real'); RC=$?
@@ -122,11 +144,44 @@ assert_exit "--version universally skipped → exit 0" 0 "$RC"
 OUT=$(run_fake 'faketool sub --fake' cs); RC=$?
 assert_exit "non-target ext (.cs) → exit 0" 0 "$RC"
 
+# ======================= DIFF-SCOPE (edit hunk only) =======================
+# An Edit must verify only its changed hunk, never the whole file on disk. Repro
+# shape: a file already carrying an unknown flag, edited elsewhere with a clean
+# hunk, must stay quiet — the pre-fix whole-file scan re-flagged the untouched
+# line on every unrelated edit.
+OUT=$(run_edit 'faketool sub --fake' 'faketool sub --real'); RC=$?
+assert_exit "diff-scope: unknown flag on disk, clean hunk → exit 0" 0 "$RC"
+assert_silent "diff-scope: pre-existing flag outside the hunk not re-flagged" "$OUT"
+
+# Counterpart MUST-fire: an unknown flag introduced BY the edit's hunk fires.
+OUT=$(run_edit 'faketool sub --real' 'faketool sub --fake'); RC=$?
+assert_exit "diff-scope: unknown flag in the hunk → exit 0" 0 "$RC"
+ctx_contains "diff-scope: hunk flag reported" "$OUT" "UNKNOWN_FLAG: faketool sub --fake"
+
+# --------------- PARTIAL-REPLACEMENT (bare-flag hunk reconstruction) ---------
+# An Edit whose new_string is ONLY the swapped-in flag carries no binary or
+# subcommand, so the hunk yields no command candidate and a genuinely-introduced
+# unknown flag would be missed. The disk lines model POST-edit state (PostToolUse
+# runs after the edit applies), so the flag token is already on disk. Bounded
+# context reconstruction pulls the on-disk line carrying the hunk's flag token
+# and scans it. MUST-FIRE: fails against the pre-fix hook, passes after.
+OUT=$(run_edit 'faketool sub --fake' '--fake'); RC=$?
+assert_exit "partial-edit: bare-flag hunk reconstructs context → exit 0" 0 "$RC"
+ctx_contains "partial-edit: reconstructed hunk flag reported" "$OUT" "UNKNOWN_FLAG: faketool sub --fake"
+
+# MUST-STAY-QUIET: the same bare-flag shape where the disk line ALSO carries a
+# different pre-existing unknown flag NOT in new_string. Reconstruction keeps
+# only candidates whose flag appears in the hunk, so the unrelated --otherbogus
+# never re-fires — the diff-scope contract holds through reconstruction.
+OUT=$(run_edit 'faketool sub --real --otherbogus' '--real'); RC=$?
+assert_exit "partial-edit: unrelated pre-existing flag not re-fired → exit 0" 0 "$RC"
+assert_silent "partial-edit: only hunk-flag verified, --otherbogus stays quiet" "$OUT"
+
 # Kill switch — disabled path is a clean no-op despite a hallucinated flag.
 dis_dir="$TEST_TMPDIR/fake-disabled"
 mkdir -p "$dis_dir/cache"
 printf 'faketool sub --fake\n' >"$dis_dir/target.sh"
-dis_input=$(MSYS_NO_PATHCONV=1 jq -n --arg fp "$dis_dir/target.sh" '{tool_input:{file_path:$fp}}')
+dis_input=$(MSYS_NO_PATHCONV=1 jq -n --arg fp "$dis_dir/target.sh" --arg c 'faketool sub --fake' '{tool_name:"Write",tool_input:{file_path:$fp,content:$c}}')
 OUT=$(PATH="$FAKE_BIN_DIR:$PATH" CLAUDE_PLUGIN_OPTION_CLI_FLAG_VERIFY_BINS=faketool \
   LOCALAPPDATA="$dis_dir/cache" XDG_CACHE_HOME="$dis_dir/cache" \
   CLAUDE_PLUGIN_OPTION_CLI_FLAG_VERIFY_ENABLED=false bash "$HOOK" <<<"$dis_input" 2>&1); RC=$?
@@ -155,7 +210,7 @@ SINK="$(make_sink "cat >\"$TEL\"")"
 tel_dir="$TEST_TMPDIR/fake-tel"
 mkdir -p "$tel_dir/cache"
 printf 'faketool sub --fake\n' >"$tel_dir/target.sh"
-tel_input=$(MSYS_NO_PATHCONV=1 jq -n --arg fp "$tel_dir/target.sh" '{tool_input:{file_path:$fp}}')
+tel_input=$(MSYS_NO_PATHCONV=1 jq -n --arg fp "$tel_dir/target.sh" --arg c 'faketool sub --fake' '{tool_name:"Write",tool_input:{file_path:$fp,content:$c}}')
 PATH="$FAKE_BIN_DIR:$PATH" CLAUDE_PLUGIN_OPTION_CLI_FLAG_VERIFY_BINS=faketool \
   LOCALAPPDATA="$tel_dir/cache" XDG_CACHE_HOME="$tel_dir/cache" \
   HOOK_TELEMETRY_SINK="$SINK" bash "$HOOK" <<<"$tel_input" >/dev/null 2>&1 || true