diff --git a/LifeOS/install/skills/Upgrade/SKILL.md b/LifeOS/install/skills/Upgrade/SKILL.md
index c478b6d0f4..ffbd69a5f6 100644
--- a/LifeOS/install/skills/Upgrade/SKILL.md
+++ b/LifeOS/install/skills/Upgrade/SKILL.md
@@ -151,6 +151,7 @@ These output patterns are **FAILURES**:
 - **Check ALL sources in parallel** — Anthropic blog, changelog, YouTube channels, GitHub releases. Don't check sequentially.
 - **Upgrades must not break existing skills or workflows.** Verify backward compatibility before applying.
 - **Full upgrade check can take 5-7 minutes.** Use `run_in_background: true` for the outer agent.
+- **Keep the `claude-code-guide` spawn to three areas or fewer.** That agent runs on a small-context model (haiku, 200k). Asking one spawn to cover the whole API surface makes it fan out a batch of doc fetches whose results exceed the window on the next request, and it dies with `Prompt is too long` about ten seconds in — returning nothing, while the sibling `Explore` agents in the same batch all succeed. The prompt length is not the problem; the tool-result volume is. Split the surface across parallel spawns and tell it to look things up rather than pull whole pages. If one dies anyway, fall back to the `claude-code/CHANGELOG.md` raw URL in `sources.json`. *(2026-07-26.)*
 
 ## Execution Log
 
diff --git a/LifeOS/install/skills/Upgrade/Workflows/Upgrade.md b/LifeOS/install/skills/Upgrade/Workflows/Upgrade.md
index 4d351c4f2e..e25c19c43b 100644
--- a/LifeOS/install/skills/Upgrade/Workflows/Upgrade.md
+++ b/LifeOS/install/skills/Upgrade/Workflows/Upgrade.md
@@ -114,7 +114,13 @@ Return within 90s; reduce per_page to 3 if slow.
 
 Spawn `Agent(subagent_type="claude-code-guide", run_in_background: true)`:
 
-Verify LifeOS's Claude Code references against the latest API surface. Check: hook event types, slash commands, agent/subagent types, settings.json fields, MCP integration, Agent SDK, Claude API. For each area, return current features, recent additions, deprecated items, and LifeOS staleness risk (LOW/MEDIUM/HIGH). Focus on changes affecting hooks, skills, or Algorithm. Return within 90s.
+Verify LifeOS's Claude Code references against the latest API surface. For each area, return current features, recent additions, deprecated items, and LifeOS staleness risk (LOW/MEDIUM/HIGH). Focus on changes affecting hooks, skills, or Algorithm. Return within 90s.
+
+**Ask for at most three areas per spawn, and say to look things up rather than pull whole pages.** `claude-code-guide` runs on a small-context model (haiku, 200k), so it is the tool-result volume that kills it, not the prompt. A single spawn covering the full surface — hook events, settings fields, slash commands, SKILL.md frontmatter, subagent frontmatter, MCP, Agent SDK, Claude API — makes it fan out a batch of doc fetches whose combined results exceed the window on the very next request, and the agent dies with `Prompt is too long` about ten seconds in, before returning anything. Observed 2026-07-26.
+
+Split the surface across parallel spawns instead — e.g. one for hooks + settings + subagent frontmatter, one for skills + slash commands + MCP, one for Agent SDK + Claude API. Losing one spawn then costs one slice rather than the whole freshness check.
+
+If a spawn does die this way, the changelog is the fallback: `WebFetch` the `claude-code/CHANGELOG.md` raw URL already listed in `sources.json` and read the version range directly.
 
 Output feeds Step 5 (Filter and Score) as source type `Claude Code Guide` and is cross-referenced against current LifeOS files for staleness.