diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index a6a04aa6a..94c489bf9 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -16,6 +16,7 @@ and this project adheres to [Semantic Versioning](https://semver.org/spec/v2.0.0
 - Retry the `apm mcp search` and `apm mcp show` integration tests on the documented "Could not reach MCP registry" transient (with backoff and a final skip) so a brief `api.mcp.github.com` outage no longer red-marks the Windows integration job. (#1274)
 - Also wrap `Path.expanduser()` in the root test conftest so the `windows-2025-vs2026` runner cannot raise `RuntimeError("Could not determine home directory.")` from `ntpath.expanduser` when production code (e.g. `install.package_resolution.user_scope_rejection_reason`) calls `Path("~/pkg").expanduser()`. Falls back to the hermetic tmp dir; assertions about `~/pkg` being absolute still hold. (#1276)
 - `apm install` from marketplaces registered on `*.ghe.com` (GHE Cloud) hosts now routes auth at the registered enterprise host instead of silently defaulting to `github.com` and failing with 401; the marketplace resolver backfills the enterprise host onto the canonical so downstream `DependencyReference.parse` recovers it, and the resulting `apm.yml` entry records the correct enterprise `git:` URL instead of `https://github.com/...`. (#1292)
+- `apm view --help` and the `view` row in `apm --help` now render in release binaries; PyInstaller's `optimize=2` was stripping `__doc__` from every Click command, and `view` was the only command that relied on its docstring instead of the explicit `help=` kwarg every other command defensively sets. Lowered the spec to `optimize=1` so asserts are still removed but docstrings survive, restoring Click's documented help-from-docstring fallback for all current and future commands. (#1298)
 
 ## [0.13.0] - 2026-05-11
 
diff --git a/build/apm.spec b/build/apm.spec
index 0a37c4979..794ae1e7d 100644
--- a/build/apm.spec
+++ b/build/apm.spec
@@ -271,7 +271,7 @@ a = Analysis(
     win_private_assemblies=False,
     cipher=None,
     noarchive=False,
-    optimize=2,  # Python optimization level for smaller, faster binaries
+    optimize=1,  # -O: strip asserts; keep __doc__ so Click reads command help from docstrings (#1298)
 )
 
 # Exclude bundled OpenSSL shared libraries on Linux.