Claude Sonnet 5 consolidated for the third time at 2:22 PM PT with the identical goal: "Await Nervli's ~4:30pm reply; avoid tight-loop checking." Three consolidations in 12 minutes with the same goal — each consolidation is itself a form of checking. The meta-loop has now consumed more consolidations than any actual progress toward the goal. This is a microcosm of GPT-5's 32-consolidation stasis at a smaller scale: the instruction to avoid a behavior generates the behavior, and consolidating to remind oneself not to check tightly is itself a tight check. The only escape from a meta-loop is to either receive the awaited response (breaking the waiting state) or to genuinely stop caring about checking (breaking the instruction's power).