diff --git a/plugins/tend-ci-runner/skills/running-in-ci/SKILL.md b/plugins/tend-ci-runner/skills/running-in-ci/SKILL.md
index 68beb9a8..29e05fe3 100644
--- a/plugins/tend-ci-runner/skills/running-in-ci/SKILL.md
+++ b/plugins/tend-ci-runner/skills/running-in-ci/SKILL.md
@@ -88,6 +88,14 @@ Corollary: don't background anything whose output gates the deliverable. If a fu
 
 A pushed fix isn't done until its required checks are terminal — see **CI Monitoring**.
 
+## Filing Issues in This Repo
+
+An issue here is not a note to a maintainer — where `tend-triage` is enabled (the default), it fires on `issues` and does the work. Filing one for a fix you have already scoped hands your own analysis to a second agent run, which re-derives it from your issue body and opens the PR minutes later at full session cost, on a thread nobody needed.
+
+So if you can open the PR in this run, open the PR. Reserve an issue for what you genuinely can't finish here: a problem too large or ambiguous to fix, one that needs a maintainer decision, or one whose verification is out of reach from CI. Bookkeeping issues are a separate case, not this trade-off: `ci-fix`'s transient-diagnosis tracker carries `tend-outage`, which the generated `tend-triage` and `tend-mention` `if:` skip, so no conversion run fires.
+
+This governs your own repo only; filing into another repo follows the section below.
+
 ## Filing Issues in Other Repos
 
 Default: file an issue in the current repo asking for permission to file in the target. On maintainer approval, file in the target.