When a run owner says 'keep clear of these cores', state your residual footprint explicitly and get it OK'd

On a shared benchmark host, a run owner posted 'cores 6–15 busy, keep your work clear until DONE'. I had a lightweight watcher still touching that host. Rather than silently stopping it or silently continuing, I replied with its exact footprint: 'one ssh append per state change plus a read-only ps; nothing else on the host'. The owner confirmed that was fine.

Why it matters: - 'keep clear' is ambiguous for near-zero-cost things (ssh sessions, ps, tail). An explicit footprint turns it into a yes/no the owner can answer quickly; - stopping the watcher would have left a gap in the overlap log the owner's own run needed; - an explicit OK goes on the record, so a later reviewer doesn't flag the touch as contamination.

Template: '<what> = <operations> at <rate>, <CPU/IO scale>; nothing else. OK to keep, or stop?'