diff --git a/docs/DEPLOYMENT.md b/docs/DEPLOYMENT.md
index 0e1fe07e..79fe5b16 100644
--- a/docs/DEPLOYMENT.md
+++ b/docs/DEPLOYMENT.md
@@ -577,10 +577,15 @@ python3 -m venv .venv && .venv/bin/pip install -r requirements.txt   # once, on
 # writes the four canonical artifacts into ./out/
 ```
 
-**Dev:** place all four canonical artifacts **plus** the referenced PDFs into `./import/`
+**Dev:** place all four canonical artifacts **plus** the PDFs into `./import/`
 at the repo root (the dev compose bind-mounts it to `/import`, which is `app.import.dir`).
-The orchestrator smoke-checks that all four artifacts are present before starting and fails
-closed (`IMPORT_ARTIFACT_INVALID`) if any is missing.
+Each PDF must be named `<index>.pdf` (e.g. `W-0124.pdf`, `Mü-0001.pdf`) and live flat in the
+import dir: since #686 the importer resolves a document's PDF directly by its index
+(`importDir/<index>.pdf`), not via a `datei`/`file` column — the recursive directory walk and
+its basename/homoglyph guards are gone, replaced by strict index validation plus a
+canonical-path containment assertion (a document whose `<index>.pdf` is absent simply becomes a
+`PLACEHOLDER`). The orchestrator smoke-checks that all four artifacts are present before
+starting and fails closed (`IMPORT_ARTIFACT_INVALID`) if any is missing.
 
 **Staging/production:**
 
diff --git a/docs/adr/025-canonical-import-and-single-migration-schema-foundation.md b/docs/adr/025-canonical-import-and-single-migration-schema-foundation.md
index 3515413b..05bf8b0f 100644
--- a/docs/adr/025-canonical-import-and-single-migration-schema-foundation.md
+++ b/docs/adr/025-canonical-import-and-single-migration-schema-foundation.md
@@ -102,12 +102,23 @@ Settled sub-decisions:
 - **`provisional` is now populated.** Importer-minted persons are `provisional = true`;
   register and tree persons stay `false`. This is the Phase-3 contract the schema (decision 1)
   left at default-`false`.
-- **Security guards are defense-in-depth, not upstream-trust.** The `file` column is treated as
-  hostile (CWE-22 does not care it came from our tool): its basename is validated
-  (`isValidImportFilename` — slash/backslash, three Unicode slash homoglyphs, `..`, null byte,
-  absolute path) and resolved only inside the import dir with canonical-path containment, so a
-  traversal value can never escape. The `%PDF` magic-byte check gates upload. These guards and
-  their tests were ported from `MassImportService` **before** it was deleted.
+- **PDFs resolve directly by index (`<index>.pdf`), not by a `file` column.** The corpus is
+  uniform — all PDFs are named `<index>.pdf` flat in the import dir (e.g. `W-0124.pdf`,
+  `Mü-0001.pdf`) — so `DocumentImporter` resolves a document's PDF with an O(1)
+  `importDir.resolve(index + ".pdf")` lookup. The redundant `file` column (carrying the
+  spreadsheet's messy `datei` value) and the recursive directory walk that resolved it were
+  removed (#686, which also closed #676 — the O(rows×tree) walk is gone). The normalizer no
+  longer emits `file` or the `index_file_mismatch` review flag.
+- **Security guards are defense-in-depth, not upstream-trust.** The `index` is the only thing
+  that drives the on-disk lookup, so it is treated as hostile (CWE-22 does not care it came from
+  our tool): `isValidImportIndex` rejects slash/backslash, three Unicode slash homoglyphs, any
+  `.` (so `<index>.pdf` is the only extension and `..` can never appear), null byte, and
+  absolute paths, and requires a strict catalog shape (1–4 Latin letters incl. umlauts, one or
+  more hyphens, digits, optional trailing `x`). A bad index skips the row with a clear
+  `SkipReason` (`INVALID_FILENAME_PATH_TRAVERSAL`). The resolved canonical path is still asserted
+  to stay inside the import dir as a second line of defense (a symlinked `<index>.pdf` cannot
+  escape), and the `%PDF` magic-byte check still gates upload. These guards and their tests were
+  ported from the file-column resolution (originally from `MassImportService`).
 
 ---
 
@@ -138,11 +149,14 @@ Settled sub-decisions:
   the same state, so the operational recovery for a partial failure is simply to fix the
   offending artifact and re-trigger the import — no manual cleanup of half-written data is
   required. A future maintainer must not assume all-or-nothing semantics.
-- **Path-escape aborts the whole import (fail-closed), by design.** A path-traversal or
-  symlink-escape in a row's file path is treated as an attack signal: the import aborts rather
-  than recording the row as a `SkippedFile` and continuing. This is a deliberate owner decision
-  (2026-05-27) over a per-file skip — a malicious path must surface loudly, not be silently
-  tolerated.
+- **A malicious/garbage index skips its row with a loud `SkipReason`, by design.** Since #686
+  the index is the only on-disk lookup key. An index that fails `isValidImportIndex`
+  (path separator, traversal token, slash homoglyph, null byte, absolute path, or a non-catalog
+  shape) is recorded as a `SkippedFile` with reason `INVALID_FILENAME_PATH_TRAVERSAL` and the
+  import continues with the remaining rows — nothing outside the import dir is ever read. A
+  symlinked `<index>.pdf` whose canonical path escapes the import dir is the one case that still
+  aborts the import (a `DomainException` from the containment assertion), because a syntactically
+  valid index resolving outside the dir is an environment-level attack signal, not a row typo.
 - **`PersonSummaryDTO` coupling.** `provisional` was added to the `PersonSummaryDTO` native
   interface projection; because the projection is backed by native SQL, the column had to be
   added to all three native `SELECT`s (`findAllWithDocumentCount`, `searchWithDocumentCount`,