diff --git a/paper/archeflow.tex b/paper/archeflow.tex
index aa5f1b6..e0067f2 100644
--- a/paper/archeflow.tex
+++ b/paper/archeflow.tex
@@ -733,6 +733,70 @@ toward specific cognitive orientations---but the shadow mechanism prevents them
 from drifting too far, maintaining a productive operating range analogous to
 what \citeauthor{lu2026assistant} achieve through activation capping.
 
+\subsection{Wiggum Breaks as Human-in-the-Loop Boundaries}
+
+A central question in autonomous agent systems is: \emph{when should the
+system stop acting and ask a human?} Most frameworks treat this as an
+implementation detail---a timeout, a retry limit, an exception handler.
+ArcheFlow treats it as a first-class architectural concept through the
+\emph{Wiggum Break}.
+
+The Wiggum Break defines the \textbf{formal boundary between autonomous and
+human-supervised operation}. It is not a failure mode; it is the system's
+\emph{designed} response to situations where autonomous resolution is
+provably unproductive:
+
+\begin{itemize}
+  \item \textbf{Oscillation} (finding present $\to$ absent $\to$ present)
+  indicates a genuine tension in the review criteria that no amount of
+  cycling will resolve---only human judgment about which criterion takes
+  priority.
+
+  \item \textbf{Divergence} (convergence score $< 0.5$ for two consecutive
+  cycles) indicates that the implementation is getting worse with each
+  iteration---the agents lack the context or capability to solve the
+  problem, and continuing wastes resources.
+
+  \item \textbf{Repeated shadow detection} (same dysfunction three times)
+  indicates that the corrective action framework has exhausted its
+  options---the task structure is incompatible with the assigned archetype,
+  and a human must re-scope.
+\end{itemize}
+
+This framing inverts the typical HITL paradigm. Rather than asking
+``how much autonomy should the system have?'' and pre-defining approval
+gates, ArcheFlow asks ``under what conditions is autonomy
+\emph{provably unproductive}?'' and derives the HITL boundary from
+convergence theory. The system runs autonomously by default and escalates
+only when it can demonstrate---through quantitative metrics, not
+heuristics---that continued autonomous operation will not improve the
+outcome.
+
+This approach has three advantages over pre-defined approval gates:
+
+\begin{enumerate}
+  \item \textbf{Adaptive autonomy}: Simple tasks never trigger a Wiggum
+  Break; complex tasks trigger one quickly. The HITL boundary adapts to
+  task difficulty without manual configuration.
+
+  \item \textbf{Auditable escalation}: Every Wiggum Break emits a
+  \texttt{wiggum.break} event with the trigger condition, run state, and
+  unresolved findings. The human receives not just a request for help,
+  but a structured summary of \emph{why} autonomous resolution failed
+  and what specifically needs their judgment.
+
+  \item \textbf{Minimal interruption}: Pre-defined gates (``approve every
+  PR'', ``review every design'') interrupt the human on tasks the system
+  could have handled autonomously. Convergence-derived breaks interrupt
+  only when the system has evidence that it cannot proceed productively.
+\end{enumerate}
+
+The Wiggum Break thus operationalizes a principle from resilience
+engineering: the system should be \emph{autonomy-seeking} (preferring to
+resolve issues itself) but \emph{escalation-ready} (able to produce a
+useful handoff when self-resolution fails). The quality of the handoff---not
+just the fact of escalation---is what makes HITL effective.
+
 \subsection{Limitations}
 
 \begin{enumerate}