diff --git a/.loom/event-log.md b/.loom/event-log.md
index 56a60fe..23aeb37 100644
--- a/.loom/event-log.md
+++ b/.loom/event-log.md
@@ -1222,3 +1222,35 @@ the 404 path now lists the real surface, which is how somebody would find out.*
 is private, and a scratch test with a token-less config made every fetch look
 broken.* **`loomctl config` says whether a token was found, and reading it first
 would have been faster than reasoning.**
+
+## 2026-09-11 — declined: `--all` on `external add`
+
+**Considered:** *adopting everything a repository publishes in one command.*
+**Not done.**
+
+**Because it is a half-answer to the case it is for.** *It mirrors a surface once
+and then drifts silently* — **if that repository publishes a seventh document
+tomorrow, nothing re-runs and nothing says so.** *`check` watches documents you
+hold, not surfaces you mirror*, **which is this tool's own failure mode
+reintroduced one level up.**
+
+**And it would make `add` mean two things:** *I depend on this*, and *render all of
+that.* **Different units of justification** — *evidence in `loom/docs`, which
+adopts ten documents and keeps five `.usages.md`, one per **repository**, hung off
+an arbitrary representative because the convention offers per-document facets and
+a mirror's dependency is not per-document.*
+
+*The lesser reasons: an adoption is a standing obligation — every extra one is a
+future `CHANGED`, a polad, and somebody deciding — and bulk adoption
+industrialises the `nothing recorded` that `orient` already reports on six of our
+nine.*
+
+> **The ergonomic complaint that prompted it is mostly gone.** *What hurt was
+> typing a name wrong and getting an ambiguity back; that now lists the surface.*
+> **`list` then `add` is two commands and no guessing.**
+
+**Belief that could be shown wrong, and it is the useful half:** *that nobody
+needs a mirror that stays current.* **If somebody does, the feature is
+surface-watching — `list` compared against the lock set — and not this.** *Build
+that, and `--all` falls out of it almost free: adopt what the surface says, then
+keep watching it.*