diff --git a/docs/evolution/reader-writer-split.md b/docs/evolution/reader-writer-split.md
index 671518d..6ceb38e 100644
--- a/docs/evolution/reader-writer-split.md
+++ b/docs/evolution/reader-writer-split.md
@@ -43,26 +43,34 @@ This is the split [safety.md §2](../architecture/safety.md) already anticipates
and the "litestream read replicas" the read-scaling
[open question](../architecture/open-questions.md) names.
-## Why it isn't shipped
+## What it needs — now unblocked
-The lease needs a coordination substrate with **atomic compare-and-swap**, which
-is exactly what **Scaleway Object Storage lacks** (no `If-Match`/`If-None-Match`).
-So it requires two real changes:
+The lease needs a coordination substrate with **atomic compare-and-swap**. When
+this note was written, Scaleway Object Storage lacked it — but **Scaleway now
+supports conditional writes** (`If-Match` / `If-None-Match`), so the lease can
+live on the same Scaleway bucket; no second provider, no moving the WAL.
-1. **Move the metadata WAL/lease to conditional-write storage** — Cloudflare R2 or
- AWS S3 support preconditions; Scaleway doesn't. Compute can stay on Scaleway.
-2. **Leader election in s3lite** — acquire/refresh a lease (fencing token), and a
- litestream lifecycle that only replicates while leader. gitmote grows a
- reader/leader mode and promotion.
+Better still, **litestream already ships the lease primitive** (v0.5.8+,
+`litestream.Leaser` / `s3.Leaser`): `If-None-Match: *` to acquire, `If-Match` to
+renew, a 30 s TTL and a monotonic `Generation` (fencing token). We do **not**
+hand-roll CAS/fencing. The catch: litestream does **not** auto-gate its own
+replication on the lease (neither `Store` nor `DB` checks it, as of v0.5.13) — so
+the leader lifecycle (acquire → replicate → renew → step down on loss → release)
+is orchestration s3lite must add around litestream's primitive.
The cold-start subtlety that motivates the lease: a lone instance waking on a
push can't tell "I'm the only one, safe to write" from "I'm a new deploy while
the old still writes" — they look identical from inside. Only an external lease
answers "am I allowed to be the writer?".
+This is now a concrete piece of work, specced in s3lite (`tasks/single-writer-lease.md`
+in that repo), since the primitive lives there. gitmote then consumes it: boot as
+reader, promote on lease acquisition, reject pushes when not leader.
+
## Trigger to build it
When any of: reads get heavy enough to want replicas; deploy-time write pauses or
the residual overlap window become unacceptable; or `max-scale` needs to exceed 1
for throughput. Until then the single-writer pin plus stop-first drain is
-sufficient and far simpler.
+sufficient and far simpler — the value now is that the substrate is available, so
+it's build-when-ready rather than blocked.
diff --git a/docs/ops.md b/docs/ops.md
index 2ccaed6..0f128b5 100644
--- a/docs/ops.md
+++ b/docs/ops.md
@@ -50,11 +50,14 @@ in-process-race concern: it is a data-integrity precondition.
hit window can only leak orphan objects (garbage `gc` reclaims), never a ref
pointing at a missing object.
-Note: Scaleway Object Storage has **no conditional writes** (`If-Match` /
-`If-None-Match`). This does **not** affect gitmote — the ref CAS is a SQL
-transaction in the metadata DB, not an S3 precondition. (It does rule out the
-safety.md §4 escape hatch of moving refs to a conditional-PUT on S3 *while on
-Scaleway*; that would need a provider with preconditions.)
+Note: Scaleway Object Storage **now supports conditional writes** (`If-Match` /
+`If-None-Match`). gitmote's ref CAS is still a SQL transaction in the metadata DB
+(unchanged — it never needed an S3 precondition), but this unlocks two things on
+Scaleway itself: a real single-writer **lease** (litestream ships the primitive;
+the leader lifecycle is specced in s3lite `tasks/single-writer-lease.md`), which
+would make deploys safe by construction instead of via the stop-first drain; and
+the [safety.md §4](architecture/safety.md) escape hatch (refs behind a
+conditional-PUT CAS on object storage) is now possible here if ever wanted.
## Runtime env vars (on the container)