diff --git a/traefik/traefik.env.template b/traefik/traefik.env.template
index b95d019..d604d4a 100644
--- a/traefik/traefik.env.template
+++ b/traefik/traefik.env.template
@@ -30,6 +30,19 @@
 #    keepalived itself. Set TRAEFIK_KEEPALIVED_PASSWORD in Woodpecker to a
 #    value 8 characters or fewer (or accept that only the first 8 chars are
 #    actually significant) so the effective negotiated value is unambiguous.
+#
+#   2026-09-12 RE-TRIGGER: traefik.env was found MISSING on disk after the
+#   Pattern C migration merged — the manifest-driven provisioning render only
+#   happens on a push that changes traefik/, and traefik is bootstrap-tier
+#   (stack-deploy.sh must be run manually; the pipeline never auto-deploys
+#   this stack). A manual `stack-deploy.sh traefik` had apparently been run
+#   while traefik.env was absent, causing Swarm's own interpolation to
+#   silently render KEEPALIVED_PASSWORD/KEEPALIVED_VIRTUAL_IPS as EMPTY
+#   STRINGS on keepalived-master (not missing — empty, which is worse,
+#   since it's a valid-looking VRRP auth string that mismatches everything).
+#   This comment-only change re-triggers provision-secrets to re-render and
+#   re-ship traefik.env; a manual `stack-deploy.sh traefik` must still be run
+#   afterward to actually apply it to the running services.
 # ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
 
 # ── Keepalived (non-secret config) ────────────────────────────────────────