diff --git a/docs/WhatsNew.md b/docs/WhatsNew.md
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@@ -46,3 +46,11 @@ The eq/ord prelude milestone is done. `ne`, `lt`, `le`, `gt`, `ge` now ship in t
 A couple of latent bugs in the type-checker surfaced while testing the natural shape of these helpers (one in the linearity check, one in the polymorphic-specialiser collector) and got fixed in the same pass. The benchmark suite is clean except one sub-millisecond noise-band metric just over the tolerance line — expected given the prelude grew, ratifiable at the next baseline refresh.
 
 Show + `print`-rewire remains the next prelude piece, gated on heap-string runtime support.
+
+## 2026-05-12 — Milestone-close audit: Eq/Ord prelude ratified
+
+Milestone-close audit done. The compile-time regression that surfaced after the prelude grew was localised: it isn't an optimisation bug, it's the cost of typechecking five more helper functions on every workspace check. Ratified — the new typecheck times are now the baseline. The benchmark suite is back to all-green.
+
+One unrelated grammar stub in the language reference (left over from a doc consolidation two days ago) was caught by the audit drift-review and fixed in the same pass.
+
+Milestone 23 is officially closed. Queue is back to user-direction.