diff --git a/scripts/cutover/start_go_stack.sh b/scripts/cutover/start_go_stack.sh
index 25092a0..d95de99 100755
--- a/scripts/cutover/start_go_stack.sh
+++ b/scripts/cutover/start_go_stack.sh
@@ -2,31 +2,37 @@
 # scripts/cutover/start_go_stack.sh
 #
 # Bring up the full Go stack persistently — alongside the live Rust
-# gateway on :3100. All Go daemons land on the parallel port range
-# :3110 + :3211-:3220 so there's no port collision.
+# gateway on :3100 + alongside the harness-transient stacks the
+# smokes spin up. All Go daemons land on the parallel port range
+# :3110 + :3211-:3220 (no collision with Rust on :3100). Persistent
+# daemons run under DIFFERENT BINARY NAMES (bin/persistent-*) and
+# write to a SEPARATE MinIO BUCKET (lakehouse-go-persistent) so the
+# pre-push smoke chain — which uses anchored `pkill -f "bin/(name)$"`
+# teardown + reads from `lakehouse-go-primary` — can run without
+# tearing down or polluting our long-running state.
 #
-# Unlike playbook_lift.sh's transient harness boot (which kills the
-# stack on exit), this script starts every daemon detached via nohup
-# + disown. Operators run it once at boot or after a restart; the
-# stack stays up until a `pkill -f "bin/(name)"` or reboot.
+# Two isolation layers:
+#   1. BINARY NAMES — persistent stack runs via symlinks
+#      bin/persistent-<name> → bin/<name>. Smoke pkill pattern
+#      `bin/(storaged|...|gateway)` matches `bin/<name>` substrings;
+#      `bin/persistent-<name>` doesn't match because the slash is
+#      followed by 'p', not the daemon-name first letter.
+#   2. MINIO BUCKETS — persistent stack uses lakehouse-go-persistent;
+#      smoke harnesses use lakehouse-go-primary. Different buckets
+#      mean rehydrate paths can't see each other's `_vectors/*`
+#      persistence files. The temp toml at /tmp/lakehouse-persistent.toml
+#      overrides only [s3].bucket; everything else inherits from
+#      lakehouse.toml.
 #
 # Logs land in /tmp/gostack-logs/<bin>.log (one per daemon).
 #
 # Used to bring up the persistent stack 2026-05-01 — the first time
 # the Go side has run as long-running daemons rather than per-harness
-# transient processes.
-#
-# KNOWN CONSTRAINT: the pre-push smoke chain (`just verify` →
-# scripts/{d,g}*_smoke.sh) uses the SAME anchored `pkill -f
-# "bin/(name)$"` pattern this script does, and ALSO matches our
-# persistent daemons by name. Pushing while the persistent stack
-# is up will kill 7 of 11 daemons (gateway, storaged, catalogd,
-# ingestd, queryd, embedd, vectord; the smokes don't reach for
-# pathwayd/observerd/matrixd/chatd). Workaround: re-run this
-# script after every push. A proper fix is to give the persistent
-# stack a different binary name (e.g. via build tags or a
-# wrapper symlink) so smoke-side pkill doesn't see it; deferred
-# until the trigger fires (i.e. when an operator gets bitten).
+# transient processes. The 2-isolation-layer split was added the
+# same day after the pre-push gate caught a smoke-vs-persistent
+# collision (g1p_smoke saw count=2 when expecting count=1 because
+# vectord's MinIO bucket had both the smoke's persist_demo AND the
+# persistent stack's workers index).
 
 set -euo pipefail
 
@@ -37,10 +43,42 @@ if [ ! -d bin ]; then
   exit 1
 fi
 
-# Ensure no leftover from a transient harness run. Anchored pattern
-# per feedback_pkill_scope; never bare `bin/`.
-echo "[gostack] killing any stale Go daemons (anchored pkill)"
-pkill -f "bin/(storaged|catalogd|ingestd|queryd|embedd|vectord|pathwayd|observerd|matrixd|gateway)$" 2>/dev/null || true
+# ── Layer 1: symlink-based binary names ─────────────────────────────
+# Create bin/persistent-* symlinks to bin/* so the persistent stack
+# has distinct cmdline strings that smoke pkill won't match. Idempotent
+# (existing symlinks are left alone).
+
+DAEMONS=(storaged catalogd ingestd queryd embedd vectord pathwayd observerd matrixd gateway)
+
+for d in "${DAEMONS[@]}"; do
+  target="bin/persistent-$d"
+  if [ ! -L "$target" ] && [ ! -e "$target" ]; then
+    ln -s "$d" "$target"
+  fi
+done
+
+# ── Layer 2: separate MinIO bucket via temp config ──────────────────
+# Generate /tmp/lakehouse-persistent.toml from the canonical
+# lakehouse.toml with [s3].bucket overridden. Caller can override the
+# bucket name via LH_PERSISTENT_BUCKET env var.
+
+PERSISTENT_BUCKET="${LH_PERSISTENT_BUCKET:-lakehouse-go-persistent}"
+TEMP_TOML=/tmp/lakehouse-persistent.toml
+
+# Create the bucket if missing. mc is idempotent with --ignore-existing.
+if command -v mc >/dev/null 2>&1; then
+  mc mb --ignore-existing "local/$PERSISTENT_BUCKET" >/dev/null 2>&1 || true
+fi
+
+# sed-replace the bucket line. Anchored to "lakehouse-go-primary" so
+# no other accidental "primary" mention gets touched.
+sed "s/lakehouse-go-primary/$PERSISTENT_BUCKET/g" lakehouse.toml > "$TEMP_TOML"
+echo "[gostack] config: $TEMP_TOML (bucket=$PERSISTENT_BUCKET)"
+
+# ── Cleanup any prior persistent daemons ────────────────────────────
+# Match by the persistent- prefix so smoke processes are untouched.
+echo "[gostack] killing any stale persistent Go daemons (anchored on persistent-)"
+pkill -f "bin/persistent-(storaged|catalogd|ingestd|queryd|embedd|vectord|pathwayd|observerd|matrixd|gateway)$" 2>/dev/null || true
 sleep 0.5
 
 mkdir -p /tmp/gostack-logs
@@ -48,16 +86,16 @@ mkdir -p /tmp/gostack-logs
 start() {
   local bin="$1"
   local port="$2"
-  local log="/tmp/gostack-logs/$bin.log"
-  nohup ./bin/"$bin" -config lakehouse.toml > "$log" 2>&1 & disown
+  local log="/tmp/gostack-logs/persistent-$bin.log"
+  nohup ./bin/persistent-"$bin" -config "$TEMP_TOML" > "$log" 2>&1 & disown
   for _ in $(seq 1 50); do
     if curl -sSf -m 1 "http://127.0.0.1:$port/health" >/dev/null 2>&1; then
-      echo "  $bin :$port up (log: $log)"
+      echo "  persistent-$bin :$port up (log: $log)"
       return 0
     fi
     sleep 0.1
   done
-  echo "  $bin :$port FAILED — log tail:"
+  echo "  persistent-$bin :$port FAILED — log tail:"
   tail -20 "$log"
   return 1
 }
@@ -77,10 +115,17 @@ start gateway   3110
 # chatd is started independently — its provider key files come from
 # /etc/lakehouse/{ollama_cloud,openrouter,opencode,kimi}.env; if
 # chatd is already up (long-running from a prior session) we don't
-# touch it.
+# touch it. chatd uses no S3, so no temp-toml override needed.
 if ! curl -sSf -m 1 http://127.0.0.1:3220/health >/dev/null 2>&1; then
   echo "[gostack] chatd :3220 not up; starting"
-  start chatd 3220
+  nohup ./bin/chatd -config lakehouse.toml > /tmp/gostack-logs/chatd.log 2>&1 & disown
+  for _ in $(seq 1 50); do
+    if curl -sSf -m 1 "http://127.0.0.1:3220/health" >/dev/null 2>&1; then
+      echo "  chatd :3220 up"
+      break
+    fi
+    sleep 0.1
+  done
 else
   echo "  chatd :3220 already up (skipping)"
 fi
@@ -91,3 +136,7 @@ for p in 3110 3211 3212 3213 3214 3215 3216 3217 3218 3219 3220; do
   curl -sSf -m 1 "http://127.0.0.1:$p/health" 2>/dev/null | head -c 80
   echo
 done
+echo
+echo "[gostack] persistent stack uses bucket: $PERSISTENT_BUCKET"
+echo "[gostack] smoke harnesses use bucket:    lakehouse-go-primary"
+echo "[gostack] tear down via: pkill -f 'bin/persistent-'"