diff --git a/docs/IRIS_EXTRACTION_HANDOFF.md b/docs/IRIS_EXTRACTION_HANDOFF.md
index 61f472f..2a4cc17 100644
--- a/docs/IRIS_EXTRACTION_HANDOFF.md
+++ b/docs/IRIS_EXTRACTION_HANDOFF.md
@@ -373,41 +373,46 @@ holds a *drawing* keyed on what produced it, and the widget still draws. The
 five reference renders and the resize render are byte-identical, and the
 sweep passes.
 
-**Picking any dirty widget instead of the deepest does not work, and the
-generated cases say so.** Tried on 2026-09-14: take whatever the dirty set
-yields first, and let `redraw`'s existing climb to the highest size reader do
-the ordering -- then also climbing to an ancestor that is itself dirty, since
-drawing that redraws this one anyway. Both fail
-`a_changed_size_lands_where_growing_it_that_way_would` at seed 1, 24 widgets
-wrong, a subtree keeping a 317 px width where a cold tree has 147.
+**Why picking any dirty widget does not work, found 2026-09-14.** `try_reuse`
+asks whether the widget in front of it is dirty and, if not, hands its parent
+the size it last reported. It does not ask whether a dirty widget sits under it
+through the size dependencies -- which is the check `retained_size` makes, on
+the path that does not draw, for exactly this reason. **The settle order is
+what covers that gap**, and it was written down nowhere: taking the deepest
+first means that by the time a reader draws, what it reads has drawn and
+propagated.
 
-What the trace says, and where it stops: with the deepest first, seed 1 settles
-in 50 draws and the same `SetSize` is drawn three times as its box is decided
-and redecided above it. Picking any settles in 12, and two of the three edited
-`SetSize` widgets are never popped at all -- they are drawn inside a `Span`'s
-pass, which consumes their marks. Nothing in the climb misfires; no escalation
-happens in this scenario at all, so the difference is only which widgets are
-drawn as the root of a pass and which inside someone else's. **Why that changes
-the answer is not yet pinned down**, and it is the thing to find out before
-changing the order again.
+The trace that shows it, on seed 2 of `tests/generated.rs`: with the deepest
+first and with an arbitrary pick, the two are identical event for event until a
+`Span` reports its size -- 147 px one way and 317 px the other, from the same
+child sizes. It had reused a subtree exactly, and inside that subtree sat a
+`SetSize` whose declared width had changed and which had not been drawn yet.
+24 widgets end up wrong.
 
-So the order is load-bearing and the cost is the scan rather than the order.
-It splits: of the 24.5%, about 15 points are the depth walk (removing it
-entirely takes 16.5B instructions to 14.0B) and about 9 are iterating the
-`HashSet` itself, which walks by capacity rather than by length. Three ways
-out, none of them tried yet:
+So the order is not about cost, and this is the thing to fix before changing
+it. Adding the missing check to `try_reuse` does make any order correct -- all
+six generated cases and the hundred-seed sweep pass with the dirty set taken in
+whatever order it yields. But `dirty_size_under` walks the size-dependency
+subtree on every reuse that hands a size back, and that costs about what the
+sort saved: at 130 of 260 widgets dirty, 7.83M instructions per frame against
+8.23M; at 32 dirty, 3.32M against 2.84M, so *worse* where the dirty set is
+small. Two other shapes measured and rejected on the way: putting the check at
+the top of `try_reuse` rather than on the two paths that return a size (7% dearer
+again), and phrasing it as `size_is_invalid`, which also lets a resize mark
+through and takes the resize phase from 7M to 106M instructions per frame.
 
-- **Keep the depth on `ActiveData`.** `draw_inner` knows the parent, whose
-  depth is in its own entry, so this is O(1) to read and the order is
-  unchanged. The risk is a second source of truth: a widget whose ancestor is
-  re-placed under a different parent without the widget itself being redrawn
-  would hold a stale depth.
-- **Bucket the dirty set by depth.** Exact, and the depth is only needed when
-  an id is inserted -- which inside the loop is always the parent of a widget
-  whose depth is already known, so no walk is needed there.
-- **Process in rounds**: sort once, drain, re-sort what is left. Cheapest to
-  write and *not* the same order -- a widget marked during a round can be
-  deeper than what remains of it.
+**What would actually pay is a maintained count** rather than a walk: each
+widget holding how many dirty widgets sit under it through size-dependency
+edges, incremented up the reader chain when a mark is added and decremented
+when one is consumed. That is O(depth) at a mark and O(1) at the check, where
+today it is O(dirty x depth) per widget settled. It wants agreeing first: every
+place that inserts into or removes from `needs_redraw` has to pair with it, and
+a count that is too low is a stale size rather than a slow frame.
+
+Of the sort's own 24.5%, about 15 points are the depth walk and about 9 are
+iterating the `HashSet`, which walks by capacity rather than by length. Keeping
+the depth on `ActiveData` would remove the first without changing the order at
+all, at the price of a second source of truth for it.
 
 **A frame that dirties many widgets at once was not being checked, and it is
 where the settle order shows.** `77bb75e` adds two generated cases -- every