diff --git a/docs/spec/glue.md b/docs/spec/glue.md
index a2290ec..72f3c67 100644
--- a/docs/spec/glue.md
+++ b/docs/spec/glue.md
@@ -553,6 +553,35 @@ Declaring an `event` drops the button unless `button: true` is declared as well;
 
 `sourceStatus:` composes unchanged: the flip happens once the target exists, and cannot re-trigger the create-from because the guard has already claimed the source.
 
+#### A retired target returns its source
+
+A target that has been retired — its status classified `cancelled` or `void` — stops satisfying the at-most-once guard, so the source may produce a replacement. That is what makes "void and reissue" expressible. But where the rule also declares a completion hook, the freed slot cannot be refilled by an event.
+
+The hook exists precisely to move the source OFF the status its own trigger qualifies on. So once it has run, the source stands at the post-generation status, a lifecycle graph declares no edge back, and no qualifying transition is ever published again. Voiding the target frees the slot and nothing can knock. Where a button is also declared, a person can click it; an event-only rule — the shape the event axis exists for — has no reissue path at all, and nothing says so.
+
+`sourceStatusOnRetire` is the hook's **inverse**: where the source returns when a target this rule produced is retired.
+
+```yaml
+generates:
+  - name: invoice-from-proforma
+    from: Proforma
+    to: Invoice
+    event: { onTransition: Proforma, when: "Status == APPROVED" }
+    map: { Proforma: id }
+    sourceStatus: INVOICED           # forward: the proforma is done once the invoice exists
+    sourceStatusOnRetire: APPROVED   # back: voiding the invoice returns it — and the trigger re-fires
+```
+
+Retiring the invoice returns the proforma to APPROVED. That is a real transition of the proforma, announced on the source's transition channel like any other, so the ordinary trigger re-fires, the guard steps over the retired invoice, and the replacement is minted. The reissue is the **ordinary path**, not a second creation route with semantics of its own — and nothing new declares what "retired" means: it is the same classification the guard reads, asked from the other end.
+
+::: info Normative
+`sourceStatusOnRetire` requires an `event` to re-fire and `sourceStatus`, of which it is the inverse, and must name a different status — a write that leaves the status where it stands is not a transition and announces nothing. It must be rejected on a rule triggered only by a button, which carries no guard, so nothing blocks a replacement and the button is already the reissue; on an appending rule, which likewise frees no slot; and wherever the target's retirement cannot be recognised where the rule is declared: a target with no status relation, a nomenclature with no `cancelled` or `void` classification, or a target belonging to another model. When a target of this rule becomes retired and the source still stands at `sourceStatus`, the source must be moved to `sourceStatusOnRetire` and that move announced on the source's transition channel; only the status may be written, and the retired target must be left exactly as it is. When the source stands anywhere else, nothing happens. The move is a transition, so where the source declares a lifecycle the edge from `sourceStatus` to it must be declared. A file that declares no `sourceStatusOnRetire` regenerates unchanged.
+:::
+
+Two conditions make the reopen idempotent without a marker of its own. The source must still stand at `sourceStatus`, so a source that has travelled further down its own lifecycle is not dragged back. And no target of that source may still count — the at-most-once guard asked from this end. The second is the one that closes redelivery: delivery is at-least-once, so a retirement can arrive again after the replacement already exists, and by then the source is standing at `sourceStatus` once more. The reopen runs exactly when a creation would be allowed through.
+
+Whether a replacement follows immediately is decided by the trigger's own `when:`, not by the reopen — which only publishes the transition. Return the source to the status the trigger qualifies on and the reissue is immediate; return it to an earlier one (a draft, for correction) and it waits for a person to move it forward again.
+
 Prefer this over [`posts`](#posts-derived-rows-on-an-event) when the result is a document with line items — `posts` emits flat mapped rows and cannot reference the freshly created header. Prefer it over a button plus a [`wait`](/spec/processes#wait-park-the-process-on-a-data-event) step when the step is really waiting for a person to remember to click: an unclicked record parks its process instance indefinitely.
 
 ## resolves — fill a relation from a register valid on a date