diff --git a/plugins/claude-ops/.claude-plugin/plugin.json b/plugins/claude-ops/.claude-plugin/plugin.json
index a5587f7e3..50f560119 100644
--- a/plugins/claude-ops/.claude-plugin/plugin.json
+++ b/plugins/claude-ops/.claude-plugin/plugin.json
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 {
   "$schema": "https://json.schemastore.org/claude-code-plugin-manifest.json",
   "name": "claude-ops",
-  "version": "0.17.2",
+  "version": "0.17.3",
   "description": "Claude Code operations toolkit. Seven skills: observability (read locally captured telemetry — OTEL store, collector, hook-event JSONL, ccusage — with trend reports and store pruning), known-issues (search known Claude product GitHub bugs, check service health, maintain a persistent tracked-issue registry), changelog (ingest Claude Code changelog entries and integrate them into the current repo), plugins (bring a machine's plugin fleet current on demand — marketplace refresh, effective-scope updates including in-repo project/local installs, new-plugin install per policy, scope-divergence detection and explicit convergence), morning-brief (read-only gh-based operator morning view — queue-label counts, merge-ready PRs, parked decisions with their RECOMMENDED lines, and loop-lane telemetry freshness), lanes (start/restart/stop/status loop lanes as named background Claude Code sessions seeded from canonical prompt files, with per-lane model/effort and a repo-pull + marketplace-refresh launch step), and a re-runnable setup action that settles where the known-issues registry lives. Plus a family of seven advisory *-audit telemetry-emitter hooks (API errors, config changes, instruction loads, permission denials, pre-compaction, skill usage, tool failures) that emit the shared hook-telemetry envelope, and a reference sink that maps envelopes into the hook-events.jsonl the observability skill reads.",
   "author": {
     "name": "Melodic Software",
diff --git a/plugins/claude-ops/CHANGELOG.md b/plugins/claude-ops/CHANGELOG.md
index f348c9475..9bdc929d6 100644
--- a/plugins/claude-ops/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/plugins/claude-ops/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -3,6 +3,20 @@
 All notable changes to the `claude-ops` plugin are documented here. Format follows
 [Keep a Changelog](https://keepachangelog.com/en/1.1.0/); this plugin uses semantic versioning.
 
+## [0.17.3]
+
+### Changed
+
+- **lanes: recorded why the mid-session staleness git probe is not `!`-injected.**
+  Evaluated the lanes skill's git probes against the precompute convention (#864).
+  The two `git rev-parse --show-toplevel` probes in `SKILL.md`'s front matter are
+  already `!` dynamic-context injections (fallback + `shell: bash`), so nothing to
+  convert there. The `context/refresh.md` staleness probe correctly stays a body
+  instruction — it fails all four conditions: conditional (only when weighing a
+  restart), needs a computed `<lane-launch-commit>` argument, and its `git fetch`
+  is an unbounded network round-trip that mutates remote-tracking refs. Added that
+  reason inline so a future reader does not re-litigate the decision.
+
 ## [0.17.2]
 
 ### Changed
diff --git a/plugins/claude-ops/skills/lanes/context/refresh.md b/plugins/claude-ops/skills/lanes/context/refresh.md
index da4b918c4..2f4213840 100644
--- a/plugins/claude-ops/skills/lanes/context/refresh.md
+++ b/plugins/claude-ops/skills/lanes/context/refresh.md
@@ -56,6 +56,16 @@ launch pulls first, so a running lane's skills correspond to that commit). Any
 output = an unconsumed merge. Swap the pathspec for whichever installed plugin a
 lane runs.
 
+**Not an `!` injection candidate.** This probe is deliberately a body instruction,
+not `!` dynamic-context injection — it fails every condition of the precompute
+convention (playbooks skill-authoring `reference/precompute-context.md`). It is
+**conditional**, consulted only when weighing a restart rather than up front on
+every `lanes` invocation; it needs a **computed argument** (`<lane-launch-commit>`,
+plus the pathspec of whichever plugin a lane runs) that a single-pass injection
+cannot supply; and its `git fetch` is **neither bounded nor pure-read** — a network
+round-trip that also updates remote-tracking refs. Safe to run by hand (it touches
+no branch or worktree), wrong to inline at load time.
+
 Getting those changes onto disk on restart (marketplace refresh + per-scope
 update) is the `plugins` skill's job — see its
 [context/sync.md](../../plugins/context/sync.md); the lanes launch already runs