diff --git a/src/exampleCoverage.test.ts b/src/exampleCoverage.test.ts
index d7db772a..4bcaefe0 100644
--- a/src/exampleCoverage.test.ts
+++ b/src/exampleCoverage.test.ts
@@ -4,13 +4,23 @@
  * SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0
  */
 
+import { Command } from "commander";
 import { readdirSync, readFileSync, statSync } from "node:fs";
-import { join } from "node:path";
+import { join, relative } from "node:path";
 import { describe, expect, it } from "vitest";
+import { AddCommands } from "./commands/index";
 
 const ROOT = join(import.meta.dirname, "..");
 
-/** Every `.ts` under `src/`, tests included. */
+/**
+ * Every non-test `.ts` under `src/`.
+ *
+ * Test files are excluded, and that exclusion is the whole point rather than a
+ * tidiness preference: this file is itself a `.ts` under `src/`, and the
+ * witness table below is a set of string literals in it. Including tests made
+ * the corpus contain the very strings it was searching for, so every witness
+ * matched itself and the check could not fail.
+ */
 function sourceFiles(dir: string, out: string[] = []): string[] {
   for (const entry of readdirSync(dir)) {
     const full = join(dir, entry);
@@ -19,11 +29,35 @@ function sourceFiles(dir: string, out: string[] = []): string[] {
       sourceFiles(full, out);
       continue;
     }
-    if (entry.endsWith(".ts")) out.push(full);
+    if (entry.endsWith(".ts") && !entry.endsWith(".test.ts")) out.push(full);
   }
   return out;
 }
 
+/**
+ * The import statements in a file, which is where a witness has to appear.
+ *
+ * Matching anywhere in the file is what let prose stand in for evidence.
+ * `RateLimiter` occurs eleven times outside tests: once as a real
+ * `import type { RateLimiter } from "workglow"`, and ten times either inside a
+ * prose comment or as a substring of a longer local name like
+ * `secFetchRateLimiterTableNames`. Ten of those eleven prove nothing, and a
+ * substring check cannot tell them from the one that does.
+ */
+function importStatements(source: string): string[] {
+  // Comments first, so a witness named in prose cannot be read as an import.
+  const code = source.replace(/\/\*[\s\S]*?\*\//g, "").replace(/(^|[^:])\/\/.*$/gm, "$1");
+  // Statement-wise, not line-wise: these imports are routinely multi-line, and
+  // `createStandardKbStrategy` sits on a continuation line of one.
+  return [
+    ...code.matchAll(/\bimport\s+type\s+[\s\S]*?\bfrom\s*["'][^"']+["']/g),
+    ...code.matchAll(/\bimport\s+(?!type\b)[\s\S]*?\bfrom\s*["'][^"']+["']/g),
+    ...code.matchAll(/\bexport\s+[\s\S]*?\bfrom\s*["'][^"']+["']/g),
+    ...code.matchAll(/\bimport\s*\(\s*["'][^"']+["']\s*\)/g),
+    ...code.matchAll(/^\s*import\s*["'][^"']+["']/gm),
+  ].map((match) => match[0]);
+}
+
 /**
  * The README's "What does the work" table is a promise about which parts of the
  * library this example actually exercises. It is checked, because the promise
@@ -33,7 +67,20 @@ function sourceFiles(dir: string, out: string[] = []): string[] {
 describe("the README's claims about what it demonstrates", () => {
   const readme = readFileSync(join(ROOT, "README.md"), "utf-8");
   const sources = sourceFiles(join(ROOT, "src"));
-  const corpus = sources.map((file) => readFileSync(file, "utf-8")).join("\n");
+  const importCorpus = sources
+    .flatMap((file) => importStatements(readFileSync(file, "utf-8")))
+    .join("\n");
+
+  it("searches a corpus that does not contain this file", () => {
+    // The self-check. Excluding tests is one line in `sourceFiles`, and without
+    // an assertion holding it there the next refactor of that function restores
+    // the loop with nothing failing.
+    const relatives = sources.map((file) => relative(ROOT, file));
+    expect(relatives).not.toContain(join("src", "exampleCoverage.test.ts"));
+    expect(relatives.filter((file) => file.endsWith(".test.ts"))).toEqual([]);
+    // And it still found the tree: an empty corpus would pass every check below.
+    expect(sources.length).toBeGreaterThan(100);
+  });
 
   it("names a real path for every row of the table", () => {
     // Each row ends in one or more backticked paths under `src/`.
@@ -53,7 +100,7 @@ describe("the README's claims about what it demonstrates", () => {
 
     // Reached through the `workglow` meta package, so a bare import of the
     // scoped name is not the evidence — the symbols are. One well-known export
-    // per package stands for it.
+    // per package stands for it, and has to appear on an import line.
     const witness: Readonly<Record<string, string>> = {
       "@workglow/job-queue": "RateLimiter",
       "@workglow/storage": "ITabularStorage",
@@ -71,8 +118,60 @@ describe("the README's claims about what it demonstrates", () => {
       const symbol = witness[pkg];
       // A package the README names and this test has no witness for is itself a
       // failure: the check is only worth anything if it covers the whole claim.
-      return symbol === undefined || !corpus.includes(symbol);
+      return symbol === undefined || !importCorpus.includes(symbol);
     });
     expect(unproven).toEqual([]);
   });
 });
+
+/**
+ * The README prints commands for a reader to run. A command that does not exist
+ * costs that reader the first ten minutes of the example — which is the one
+ * stretch this repo exists to make work.
+ *
+ * Resolved against the registered tree rather than against `--help` text, for
+ * the reason `commandsBoot.test.ts` gives: help output is prose, and a group
+ * name that appears in some description satisfies a substring check without
+ * being registered at all.
+ */
+describe("the commands the README tells a reader to run", () => {
+  const readme = readFileSync(join(ROOT, "README.md"), "utf-8");
+
+  const program = new Command();
+  AddCommands(program);
+
+  /** Walks `sec a b c` down the command tree, or reports where it broke. */
+  function resolve(words: readonly string[]): string | undefined {
+    let node: Command = program;
+    for (const word of words) {
+      const next: Command | undefined = node.commands.find(
+        (c) => c.name() === word || c.aliases().includes(word)
+      );
+      if (next === undefined) return word;
+      node = next;
+    }
+    return undefined;
+  }
+
+  it("resolves every backticked `sec …` against the command tree", () => {
+    const invocations = [...readme.matchAll(/`sec ([^`]+)`/g)].map((m) => m[1]!.trim());
+    expect(invocations.length).toBeGreaterThan(5);
+
+    const broken: string[] = [];
+    for (const invocation of new Set(invocations)) {
+      // Stop at the first thing that is not a bare word: a flag, a placeholder
+      // like <CIK>, or a shell operator. Only the leading subcommand path is
+      // resolvable, and the rest is arguments.
+      const words: string[] = [];
+      for (const word of invocation.split(/\s+/)) {
+        if (!/^[a-z][a-z0-9-]*$/.test(word)) break;
+        words.push(word);
+      }
+      if (words.length === 0) continue;
+      const missing = resolve(words);
+      if (missing !== undefined) broken.push(`sec ${invocation} (no "${missing}")`);
+    }
+
+    expect(broken).toEqual([]);
+  });
+});