It fired every 25 tool calls regardless and re-printed the entire tag vocabulary — a
reminder arriving with nothing new in it, which is what teaches a reader to skim the
block that will eventually hold something. One session produced three tags in five
hours under it.

So it counts what has NOT been said. The count runs from the last thing TAGGED or
pinned, never from the last nudge: recording something clears the debt, and a stretch
of silence earns it back. A counter reset by its own firing is a metronome; one reset
by the thing it asks for is a debt that clears when paid.

It says its own numbers, in one line — "3 tags this session, and nothing recorded in
the last 12 tool calls" is a fact somebody can act on. The vocabulary is not repeated;
`journal instructions` holds it, and a reader who needs it can ask once rather than be
shown it forty times.

Caught its own fault while being watched: it nagged on every call past the threshold
rather than once per stretch, which is the metronome again wearing the other face.