diff --git a/Cargo.lock b/Cargo.lock
index a94537b..7db761a 100644
--- a/Cargo.lock
+++ b/Cargo.lock
@@ -1759,7 +1759,7 @@ dependencies = [
 
 [[package]]
 name = "neuromesh-api"
-version = "1.1.0"
+version = "1.2.0"
 dependencies = [
  "chrono",
  "futures-util",
@@ -1787,7 +1787,7 @@ dependencies = [
 
 [[package]]
 name = "neuromesh-cache"
-version = "1.1.0"
+version = "1.2.0"
 dependencies = [
  "chrono",
  "neuromesh-core",
@@ -1800,7 +1800,7 @@ dependencies = [
 
 [[package]]
 name = "neuromesh-cli"
-version = "1.1.0"
+version = "1.2.0"
 dependencies = [
  "chrono",
  "dirs",
@@ -1830,7 +1830,7 @@ dependencies = [
 
 [[package]]
 name = "neuromesh-context"
-version = "1.1.0"
+version = "1.2.0"
 dependencies = [
  "blake3",
  "chrono",
@@ -1849,7 +1849,7 @@ dependencies = [
 
 [[package]]
 name = "neuromesh-core"
-version = "1.1.0"
+version = "1.2.0"
 dependencies = [
  "chrono",
  "dirs",
@@ -1863,7 +1863,7 @@ dependencies = [
 
 [[package]]
 name = "neuromesh-embed"
-version = "1.1.0"
+version = "1.2.0"
 dependencies = [
  "dirs",
  "fastembed",
@@ -1878,7 +1878,7 @@ dependencies = [
 
 [[package]]
 name = "neuromesh-graph"
-version = "1.1.0"
+version = "1.2.0"
 dependencies = [
  "bincode",
  "chrono",
@@ -1900,7 +1900,7 @@ dependencies = [
 
 [[package]]
 name = "neuromesh-graph-proxy"
-version = "1.1.0"
+version = "1.2.0"
 dependencies = [
  "dirs",
  "neuromesh-core",
@@ -1914,7 +1914,7 @@ dependencies = [
 
 [[package]]
 name = "neuromesh-index"
-version = "1.1.0"
+version = "1.2.0"
 dependencies = [
  "blake3",
  "chrono",
@@ -1931,7 +1931,7 @@ dependencies = [
 
 [[package]]
 name = "neuromesh-local-ai"
-version = "1.1.0"
+version = "1.2.0"
 dependencies = [
  "neuromesh-core",
  "parking_lot",
@@ -1942,7 +1942,7 @@ dependencies = [
 
 [[package]]
 name = "neuromesh-mcp"
-version = "1.1.0"
+version = "1.2.0"
 dependencies = [
  "chrono",
  "neuromesh-cache",
@@ -1967,7 +1967,7 @@ dependencies = [
 
 [[package]]
 name = "neuromesh-memory"
-version = "1.1.0"
+version = "1.2.0"
 dependencies = [
  "chrono",
  "dirs",
@@ -1981,7 +1981,7 @@ dependencies = [
 
 [[package]]
 name = "neuromesh-observability"
-version = "1.1.0"
+version = "1.2.0"
 dependencies = [
  "chrono",
  "dirs",
@@ -1996,7 +1996,7 @@ dependencies = [
 
 [[package]]
 name = "neuromesh-parser"
-version = "1.1.0"
+version = "1.2.0"
 dependencies = [
  "neuromesh-core",
  "neuromesh-index",
@@ -2027,7 +2027,7 @@ dependencies = [
 
 [[package]]
 name = "neuromesh-provider"
-version = "1.1.0"
+version = "1.2.0"
 dependencies = [
  "futures-util",
  "neuromesh-core",
@@ -2040,7 +2040,7 @@ dependencies = [
 
 [[package]]
 name = "neuromesh-router"
-version = "1.1.0"
+version = "1.2.0"
 dependencies = [
  "neuromesh-context",
  "neuromesh-core",
@@ -2053,7 +2053,7 @@ dependencies = [
 
 [[package]]
 name = "neuromesh-task"
-version = "1.1.0"
+version = "1.2.0"
 dependencies = [
  "neuromesh-core",
  "neuromesh-parser",
diff --git a/Cargo.toml b/Cargo.toml
index 295baa0..d225b22 100644
--- a/Cargo.toml
+++ b/Cargo.toml
@@ -22,7 +22,7 @@ members = [
 exclude = ["tests/fixtures/mini-axum"]
 
 [workspace.package]
-version = "1.1.0"
+version = "1.2.0"
 edition = "2021"
 rust-version = "1.80"
 authors = ["NeuroMesh Team <team@neuromesh.local>"]
diff --git a/crates/neuromesh-mcp/src/protocol.rs b/crates/neuromesh-mcp/src/protocol.rs
index 83cb2d9..10d0535 100644
--- a/crates/neuromesh-mcp/src/protocol.rs
+++ b/crates/neuromesh-mcp/src/protocol.rs
@@ -114,7 +114,7 @@ pub fn canonical_tool_name(name: &str) -> String {
 }
 
 pub fn initialize_instructions() -> &'static str {
-    "NeuroMesh MCP v1.1.0 (code-context-engine) — agent loop: (1) get_context_packet with the user task as written (default engine: fast — graph + query-side lexical expansion; prompt only; no client keywords; opt in to hybrid/deep for MiniLM embed-primary); (2) if coverage is partial/no_seed_resolved/no_confident_match, neuromesh_search_symbols or neuromesh_expand_gap; (3) neuromesh_expand_fold only when you need a folded body; (4) neuromesh_trace / neuromesh_get_dependencies for callers and blast radius; (5) after a successful edit, neuromesh_record_feedback with touched nodes. Check retrieval.resolution_tier and retrieval.cache_hit. Prefer these tools over reading whole files. neuromesh_get_context is deprecated — use get_context_packet."
+    "NeuroMesh MCP v1.2.0 (code-context-engine) — agent loop: (1) get_context_packet with the user task as written (default engine: fast — graph + query-side lexical expansion; prompt only; no client keywords; opt in to hybrid/deep for MiniLM embed-primary); for a pasted issue or bug report the response also lists where_to_look — the files to open next, best first; (2) if coverage is partial/no_seed_resolved/no_confident_match, neuromesh_search_symbols or neuromesh_expand_gap; (3) neuromesh_expand_fold only when you need a folded body; (4) neuromesh_trace / neuromesh_get_dependencies for callers and blast radius; (5) after a successful edit, neuromesh_record_feedback with touched nodes. Check retrieval.resolution_tier and retrieval.cache_hit. Prefer these tools over reading whole files. neuromesh_get_context is deprecated — use get_context_packet."
 }
 
 pub fn tool_success(id: Option<Value>, val: &Value) -> Value {
diff --git a/crates/neuromesh-mcp/src/tools.rs b/crates/neuromesh-mcp/src/tools.rs
index 9f65070..331b80b 100644
--- a/crates/neuromesh-mcp/src/tools.rs
+++ b/crates/neuromesh-mcp/src/tools.rs
@@ -500,12 +500,31 @@ impl McpToolHandler {
                 neuromesh_graph::timing("mcp: telemetry", t_s);
                 let t_s = std::time::Instant::now();
                 Ok({
-                    let value = cache_and_build(
+                    let mut value = cache_and_build(
                         &self.packet_cache,
                         &self.graph.project_id().0,
                         &build,
                         detail,
                     );
+                    // A long report (an issue, a bug template) gets the ranked
+                    // files to open next: the packet ships 1-5, the file to
+                    // change is in the top 10 far more often (SWE-bench dev:
+                    // 0.72 at 10 vs 0.48 for the packet).
+                    if task_desc.split_whitespace().count()
+                        >= neuromesh_parser::text_normalize::REPORT_WORDS
+                    {
+                        if let Some(obj) = value.as_object_mut() {
+                            obj.insert(
+                                "where_to_look".into(),
+                                json!(neuromesh_context::gold::localization_order(
+                                    &self.graph,
+                                    &task_desc,
+                                    &view,
+                                    10
+                                )),
+                            );
+                        }
+                    }
                     neuromesh_graph::timing("mcp: cache_and_build", t_s);
                     let t_s = std::time::Instant::now();
                     #[cfg(feature = "embeddings")]
diff --git a/docs/CHANGELOG.md b/docs/CHANGELOG.md
index 8305836..8422642 100644
--- a/docs/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/docs/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -2,7 +2,36 @@
 
 All notable user-facing changes live here. The README stays a product guide, not a version diary.
 
-## Unreleased
+## 1.2.0 — 2026-10-09
+
+### Bug reports and issues
+
+- **Where to look next** — for a pasted issue or bug report (60+ words) `get_context_packet` adds
+  `where_to_look`: the packet's files, then the next source files, best first (tests, docs and
+  fixtures last). `neuromesh packet --json` has the same list as `localization`. A packet holds 1–5
+  files; the file to change is in the top 10 far more often.
+- **Definition-level ranking for reports** — a report is also read definition by definition (file
+  head + every function/class span the index recorded, title counted three times) and fused with the
+  whole-file ranking.
+- **Report hygiene** — issue-template scaffolding (HTML comments, links, checklists, section headings)
+  no longer counts as words of the report; code-like tokens (`L031`, `E501`, `utf8`) are kept whole.
+- Measured on SWE-bench (file-level Acc@1/3/5/10, all gold files in the top k), tuned on the
+  SWE-bench *dev* split only: dev (225 issues) 0.160/0.347/0.427/0.538 with plain BM25 →
+  **0.249/0.484/0.600/0.680**; SWE-bench Lite test, run once (276 strict holdout issues): plain BM25
+  0.301/0.507/0.587/0.721 → **0.486/0.710/0.750/0.804** (`docs/measured.md`).
+
+### Speed
+
+- **Cold index of a large repository ~8× faster** — django (3.5k files): first packet 3m20s → 26 s.
+  Link resolution no longer rescans every path per import hint or every neighbour per call (147 s →
+  10 s); the file walk checks and reads files in parallel (16 s → 3 s). Same graph.
+
+### Housekeeping
+
+- Debug builds keep line tables only (target/debug had reached 43 GB on Windows); the benchmark
+  index cache deletes superseded snapshots.
+
+## 1.1.x follow-ups (released with 1.2.0)
 
 ### Retrieval
 
diff --git a/docs/measured.md b/docs/measured.md
index 14d8d32..ce3248d 100644
--- a/docs/measured.md
+++ b/docs/measured.md
@@ -47,6 +47,36 @@ tuning sets, whose golds *do* want the neighbours — see `docs/planning/stage5-
 (F36′, F46, F47). Per-language, the gap is widest on flat package namespaces (R: 0.24) and
 narrowest where a question names one object (Scala: 0.80).
 
+## SWE-bench Lite file localisation (2026-10-09, v1.2.0, single holdout run)
+
+Question = the issue text as filed; gold = the files the reference patch edits; metric = file-level
+Acc@k (every gold file in the top k), as LocAgent reports it. The engine's list is `localization` in
+`neuromesh packet --json` (`where_to_look` over MCP). No LLM, no embeddings, CPU only; p50 2.8 s per
+issue including a cold index of the checkout.
+
+Tuning used only the SWE-bench **dev** split (225 issues, six other repositories). Lite test was run
+once with the release binary. The 24 Lite instances from flask/requests/seaborn/xarray/pylint were
+looked at in session 16 and are excluded from the strict row.
+
+| Lite test | Acc@1 | Acc@3 | Acc@5 | Acc@10 |
+|---|---|---|---|---|
+| **this engine, strict holdout (276)** | **0.486** | **0.710** | **0.750** | **0.804** |
+| this engine, all 300 | 0.473 | 0.703 | 0.747 | 0.810 |
+| plain BM25 over the checkout (276) | 0.301 | 0.507 | 0.587 | 0.721 |
+| 1.1.0 + issue mode, packet order (258, session 16) | 0.337 | 0.504 | 0.535 | – |
+
+95% bootstrap intervals for the strict row: @1 [0.43, 0.55], @3 [0.65, 0.76], @5 [0.70, 0.80].
+
+Published reference points (LocAgent, arXiv 2503.09089, Table 4; their filtered Lite subset, not the
+same instances, so read as context): BM25 0.387 / 0.518 / 0.617; Jina-Code-v2 embeddings 0.434 /
+0.712 / 0.803; CodeRankEmbed 0.526 / 0.777 / 0.847; Agentless with GPT-4o 0.672 / 0.745 / 0.745,
+with Claude-3.5 0.726 / 0.792 / 0.796; LocAgent with Claude-3.5 0.777 / 0.920 / 0.942. LLM agents
+remain ahead at Acc@1; the engine is an LLM-free first stage they can start from.
+
+SWE-bench dev (tuning set, 225): plain BM25 0.160 / 0.347 / 0.427 / 0.538 → 0.249 / 0.484 / 0.600 /
+0.680. Raw results: `swebench/results-final-test.jsonl` (outside the repository); harness
+`scripts/swebench_localize.py`, scoring `scripts/research/eval_loc.py`.
+
 ## Speed (same machine, same hour, release binary without embeddings)
 
 ultralytics, 931 files: index ≈3.6 s; one question end-to-end p50 ≈0.70 s (n=10, cold process each
diff --git a/docs/planning/handoff-2026-10-09-session17.fa.md b/docs/planning/handoff-2026-10-09-session17.fa.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2877ac4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/docs/planning/handoff-2026-10-09-session17.fa.md
@@ -0,0 +1,59 @@
+# Handoff — session 17 (۲۰۲۶-۱۰-۰۸ تا ۰۹)
+
+نقشه: `12-roadmap-2026-10-08-session17.fa.md`. لاگ پژوهشی: `docs/research/contributions-log.md` §8.1–8.4.
+
+## merge شده
+
+| PR | محتوا | عدد |
+|---|---|---|
+| #131 | issue mode، اصلاح escalation، cap روی file_rank | — |
+| #132 | سرعت ایندکس | django سرد 3m20s → 26s (links 147s → 10s، scan 16s → 3s)، گراف یکسان |
+| #133 | دیسک | target/ به 55GB رسیده بود (debug 43GB، کش ایندکس 6.7GB)؛ مرزدار شد |
+| #134 | issue: حذف قالب، توکن‌های `L031`، `chunk_rank` (BM25 سطح definition، عنوان ×3)، لیست `localization` | dev-fast Acc@5 0.456 → 0.596 |
+
+## branch باز: `phase-o/release-1.2.0`
+
+نسخه 1.2.0، `where_to_look` در پاسخ MCP برای گزارش‌های بلند (smoke test شد)، CHANGELOG،
+harness سریع‌تر (worktree reuse + sharding با hash پایدار). بعد از عدد holdout: measured.md، PR، tag
+`v1.2.0` (workflow release سه باینری را می‌سازد)، به‌روزرسانی MCP دسکتاپ.
+
+## روش (مقاله)
+
+- dev = SWE-bench dev split (۲۲۵، ۶ ریپو؛ `swebench/devset/`). dev-fast = ۱۰ از هر ریپو (۵۹).
+- holdout = Lite test (۳۰۰) — یک بار با باینری main `d6854b6` → `swebench/results-final-test.jsonl`.
+- ارزیابی: `scripts/research/eval_loc.py` (Acc@k، `--ci` بوت‌استرپ، `--fuse`).
+
+## اعداد dev (اندازه‌گیری‌شده)
+
+| | @1 | @3 | @5 | @10 |
+|---|---|---|---|---|
+| BM25 ساده (۲۲۵) | 0.160 | 0.347 | 0.427 | 0.538 |
+| ما، localization (۲۲۵) | **0.249** | **0.484** | **0.600** | **0.680** |
+| ما، ۱۶۶ issue تنظیم‌نشده | 0.247 | 0.482 | 0.608 | 0.675 |
+| تک‌فایلی (۱۲۴) BM25 → ما | 0.290 → 0.452 | 0.532 → 0.710 | 0.613 → **0.863** | 0.774 → 0.911 |
+
+## رد شده با عدد (تکرار نکن)
+
+tf بدنه در BM25F؛ fusion برای seedها (بی‌اثر)؛ کنار گذاشتن فایل‌های داده (بی‌اثر)؛ رأی همسایه‌های گراف
+(@1 0.254 → 0.136)؛ reranker v2 روی issue (@3 0.492 → 0.373، ۸ ثانیه)؛ embedding chunkها روی CPU
+(۲.۶ chunk/s).
+
+## پذیرفته ولی هنوز در موتور نیست
+
+reranker v2 برای پرسش‌های کوتاه زبان ساده: ripgrep R@3 0.208 → 0.583، click 0.750 → 0.958، self
+0.643 → 0.679 (فقط ترتیب را عوض می‌کند، نه محتوا). گام بعدی: پیاده‌سازی اختیاری (فقط وقتی مدل نصب
+است) + یک ست تازه‌ی holdout برای تأیید.
+
+## گام‌های بعدی
+
+1. انتشار 1.2.0 (بالا).
+2. reranker v2 برای پرسش‌های ساده در موتور.
+3. مقاله §5: holdout‌های بزرگ‌تر (≥۵۰ سؤال، دو نفر)، task success per token با مدل، ablation جدول.
+4. مرحله‌ی LLM (Agentless-style، انتخاب از `where_to_look`) — نیاز به کلید API.
+
+## تله‌ها
+
+- `df -h /c` قبل از کار؛ target/debug > 10GB → پاک کن.
+- شاردهای harness را با hash پایدار تقسیم کن (حالا پیش‌فرض)؛ هرگز دو اجرا روی یک فایل خروجی.
+- clone‌ها blobless‌اند: قطع proxy = خطای checkout (۴۶ pydicom یک بار).
+- `sed` با `\\` در MSYS خراب می‌کند؛ ویرایش Python با نرمال‌سازی CRLF یا Edit.
diff --git a/docs/research/contributions-log.md b/docs/research/contributions-log.md
index 244a703..ca4d6de 100644
--- a/docs/research/contributions-log.md
+++ b/docs/research/contributions-log.md
@@ -222,3 +222,43 @@ than lexical ranking on all three sets, and hurts on *long issue reports* (trunc
 loses the report's specifics; the first stage already reads the whole report). The earlier v1
 rejection (§4) was a different experiment — it changed packet *content* (recall collapsed); this one
 only reorders. Paper: the query-length split is a finding in itself.
+
+Further rejected on dev-fast (session 17, numbers vs d = 0.254/0.492/0.576/0.695, 59 issues):
+
+| idea | Acc@1 | Acc@3 | Acc@5 | Acc@10 | verdict |
+|---|---|---|---|---|---|
+| data/CI files (`.yml`, `.json`, `.toml`…) moved behind code in the list | = | = | = | = | no effect, not kept |
+| graph neighbours of the top three files as a third RRF vote, equal weight (LocAgent-style expansion) | 0.136 | 0.373 | 0.525 | 0.661 | rejected |
+| same, weight 0.25 | 0.136 | 0.475 | 0.576 | 0.678 | rejected |
+
+Graph expansion pulls in hubs the top files call (base classes, utils) ahead of the edited module;
+LocAgent gets value from the graph through an LLM choosing which edges to follow, not from a
+blind neighbour vote.
+
+### 8.5 Holdout: SWE-bench Lite test, one run (2026-10-09, binary main d6854b6 = v1.2.0 engine)
+
+| | Acc@1 | Acc@3 | Acc@5 | Acc@10 |
+|---|---|---|---|---|
+| **ours, strict holdout (276; excludes the 24 session-16 dev-class instances)** | **0.486** [0.43,0.55] | **0.710** [0.65,0.76] | **0.750** [0.70,0.80] | **0.804** |
+| ours, all 300 | 0.473 | 0.703 | 0.747 | 0.810 |
+| ours, packet order only (276) | 0.366 | 0.536 | 0.558 | – |
+| plain BM25 (276) | 0.301 | 0.507 | 0.587 | 0.721 |
+| ours before session 17 (v1.1 + #131, packet, 258) | 0.337 | 0.504 | 0.535 | – |
+
+Cost: CPU only, no LLM, no embeddings; p50 2.8 s / p90 11.4 s per issue *including a cold index of
+the checkout*; packet p50 11.1k tokens.
+
+Reading against LocAgent Table 4 (different filtered subset — context, not a head-to-head): above
+Jina-Code-v2 at @1 (0.486 vs 0.434), equal at @3 (0.710 vs 0.712), below at @5 (0.750 vs 0.803);
+below CodeRankEmbed everywhere; at @5 level with Agentless+GPT-4o (0.750 vs 0.745) and below every
+LLM method at @1. Dev → holdout transfer: the gain over BM25 on dev (+0.09/+0.14/+0.17 @1/3/5) held
+on holdout (+0.19/+0.20/+0.16) — no sign of overfitting to the dev split.
+
+Harness lessons (for the paper's reproducibility section): blobless clones need network at checkout
+time; Windows MAX_PATH broke 14 scikit-learn checkouts under a deep temp path (fixed with a short
+work dir); worktree re-creation per instance made the run IO-bound (now reused); positional
+sharding overlapped when a resumed run started (now hash sharding).
+
+Paper next: (1) head-to-head on LocAgent's exact 274-instance subset; (2) an LLM stage over
+`where_to_look` (Agentless-style file choice) to measure Acc@1 at a fraction of agent tokens;
+(3) ablation table from §8.3 on the holdout (one run per component removed).
diff --git a/scripts/swebench_localize.py b/scripts/swebench_localize.py
index ee1ef96..12d3027 100644
--- a/scripts/swebench_localize.py
+++ b/scripts/swebench_localize.py
@@ -22,6 +22,7 @@
 import sys
 import tempfile
 import time
+import zlib
 
 sys.path.insert(0, os.path.dirname(__file__))
 from compare_baselines import Bm25, repo_files  # noqa: E402
@@ -36,6 +37,16 @@ def checkout(clone, commit, dest):
     git's worktree bookkeeping takes locks, so a failed add is retried (39 of the
     first 276 test-split instances were lost to that, not to the engine)."""
     clone, dest = os.path.abspath(clone), os.path.abspath(dest)
+    # An existing worktree is moved to the commit in place: only files that
+    # differ are rewritten. Re-creating a django worktree per instance (6k
+    # files through the virus scanner) made a run IO-bound at minutes each.
+    if os.path.isdir(os.path.join(dest, ".git")) or os.path.isfile(os.path.join(dest, ".git")):
+        r = subprocess.run(["git", "-C", dest, "checkout", "--force", "--detach", commit],
+                           capture_output=True, text=True)
+        subprocess.run(["git", "-C", dest, "clean", "-ffdxq"], capture_output=True)
+        ok = subprocess.run(["git", "-C", dest, "rev-parse", "HEAD"], capture_output=True, text=True)
+        if r.returncode == 0 and ok.stdout.strip().startswith(commit[:12]):
+            return
     last = ""
     for attempt in range(5):
         if os.path.isdir(dest):
@@ -125,7 +136,10 @@ def _main():
     todo = [r for r in rows if r["instance_id"] not in done]
     if args.shard:
         i, n = (int(x) for x in args.shard.split("/"))
-        todo = todo[i::n]
+        # By a stable hash of the id, not by position in what is left: shards
+        # that start while another run is still writing the same files would
+        # otherwise see different leftovers and overlap.
+        todo = [r for r in todo if zlib.crc32(r["instance_id"].encode()) % n == i]
     if args.limit:
         todo = todo[: args.limit]
     os.makedirs(args.work, exist_ok=True)