diff --git a/authn/bearer.go b/authn/bearer.go
index 60e139e2f754390ceb765506b3ccc2c7540194bb..d73a947f30cb406fa2c9ecff15adfd94587996f1 100644
--- a/authn/bearer.go
+++ b/authn/bearer.go
@@ -152,37 +152,70 @@ // StatusFor maps an error out of Resolve — or out of a later Authorize — onto
 // the status the surface must answer with. It is one function so that the three
 // surfaces cannot each invent their own table.
 //
-// The mapping, and the one line of it that has to be defended:
+// Everything the credential itself can be wrong about is bearer.StatusFor's
+// answer, not a second copy of it: ErrForbidden is 403, ErrUnavailable is 503
+// and never 401, and ErrInvalid, ErrRevoked and ErrNotOurs are 401. That last
+// arm is only reached because ErrNotOurs is decided before we ask — a meta.sr.ht
+// PAT used to fall through to spec's own token store, and with that store gone
+// it is a refusal at the door.
 //
-//   - bearer.ErrUnavailable is 503 and never 401. Reading "I could not reach
-//     tokens.sr.ht" as "your token is revoked" would refuse every live instance
-//     token on the instance for as long as a daemon that is deliberately off the
-//     hot path is restarting, and would tell a thousand clients their
-//     credentials are bad when the truth is that one service is down. 503 says
-//     the true thing and keeps the operator's attention where the fault is.
-//   - ErrMissingGrant and ErrNotInstanceOwner are 403: the credential verifies
+// The ErrUnavailable line is the one worth restating even though it is no longer
+// spelled here. Reading "I could not reach tokens.sr.ht" as "your token is
+// revoked" would refuse every live instance token for as long as a daemon that
+// is deliberately off the hot path takes to restart, and would tell a thousand
+// clients their credentials are bad when the truth is that one service is down.
+//
+// What this function adds is what bearer cannot know:
+//
+//   - ErrMissingGrant and ErrNotInstanceOwner are 403. The credential verifies
 //     and the holder is who they say they are, so retrying is pointless and what
-//     they need is a wider grant, not another login.
-//   - Everything permanent about the credential itself — malformed, foreign,
-//     revoked — is 401.
-//   - ErrNoAgentPlane is 503 and not 401. An instance with no [tokens.sr.ht]
-//     origin cannot check any credential, and telling the holder of a good token
-//     that it is bad would send them to re-provision it.
-//   - Everything else is transient by definition and answers 503, which is the
-//     fail-closed direction: a backend outage never reads as a valid credential.
+//     they need is a wider grant, not another login. Both are asked before the
+//     bearer table, because ErrMissingGrant is raised beside a token that
+//     verified and must not be read as one that did not.
+//   - ErrNoToken is 401: nothing was presented on a surface that requires a
+//     credential.
+//   - ErrNoAgentPlane, and anything else at all, is 503. An instance with no
+//     [tokens.sr.ht] origin cannot check any credential, and telling the holder
+//     of a good token that it is bad would send them to re-provision it; an
+//     unclassified error is a backend that could not answer. This is where the
+//     two tables' defaults deliberately differ — bearer's unrecognised failure
+//     is the caller's credential, because everything reaching it is about a
+//     credential, while an unrecognised failure here can be the database this
+//     resolver had to consult, which must never read as a bad token.
 func StatusFor(err error) int {
 	switch {
 	case err == nil:
 		return http.StatusOK
-	case errors.Is(err, bearer.ErrUnavailable):
-		return http.StatusServiceUnavailable
-	case errors.Is(err, bearer.ErrForbidden),
-		errors.Is(err, ErrMissingGrant),
-		errors.Is(err, ErrNotInstanceOwner):
+	case errors.Is(err, ErrMissingGrant), errors.Is(err, ErrNotInstanceOwner):
 		return http.StatusForbidden
-	case IsAuthFailure(err):
+	case isBearerRefusal(err):
+		return bearer.StatusFor(err)
+	case errors.Is(err, ErrNoToken):
 		return http.StatusUnauthorized
 	default:
 		return http.StatusServiceUnavailable
 	}
 }
+
+// isBearerRefusal reports whether err is one of the sentinels bearer.StatusFor
+// has an answer for. The list is here rather than in a helper over there because
+// it is the question "did the shared validator decide this?", and a wrong answer
+// to it is what would let the 503 default below swallow a 401 — or, worse, let
+// bearer's own 401 default swallow a database outage.
+func isBearerRefusal(err error) bool {
+	return errors.Is(err, bearer.ErrForbidden) ||
+		errors.Is(err, bearer.ErrUnavailable) ||
+		errors.Is(err, bearer.ErrInvalid) ||
+		errors.Is(err, bearer.ErrRevoked) ||
+		errors.Is(err, bearer.ErrNotOurs)
+}
+
+// Challenge is the WWW-Authenticate value every 401 this service answers must
+// carry, per RFC 9110 §11.6.1 — the scheme, and this service's config section as
+// the realm, which is what names it in the config, in the nav and in a grant
+// everywhere else on the instance.
+//
+// It is bearer.Challenge with our section already in it, so that the four
+// surfaces that refuse a credential (the resolver's middleware, MCP, /query and
+// the read plane's machine formats) cannot name four realms.
+func Challenge() string { return bearer.Challenge(ConfigSection) }
diff --git a/authn/bearer_test.go b/authn/bearer_test.go
index da9fc73ea9371d5ce1800d135a44fbcbee98d13c..85017989cfc49e50aa2078b6330c1b1d17df981f 100644
--- a/authn/bearer_test.go
+++ b/authn/bearer_test.go
@@ -466,3 +466,11 @@ 			assert.Equal(t, c.want, StatusFor(c.err))
 		})
 	}
 }
+
+// RFC 9110 asks a 401 to name the scheme it would accept, and the realm is this
+// service's config section — the string that identifies it in the config, in the
+// nav and in a grant. One spelling, so that the four surfaces which refuse a
+// credential cannot name four realms.
+func TestChallenge(t *testing.T) {
+	assert.Equal(t, `Bearer realm="spec.sr.ht"`, Challenge())
+}
diff --git a/authn/resolver.go b/authn/resolver.go
index c9664488b39e0b2f23767e332fdc7c92e3ad0202..fc5ed47383398c022791e3ad4029baca19ec78e8 100644
--- a/authn/resolver.go
+++ b/authn/resolver.go
@@ -207,6 +207,13 @@ 					slog.ErrorContext(r.Context(), "resolving an agent credential failed",
 						"method", r.Method, "path", r.URL.Path, "status", status,
 						scribe.Err(err))
 				}
+				if status == http.StatusUnauthorized {
+					// RFC 9110 requires the challenge on a 401, and the caller
+					// here is always a machine holding a bearer token: naming the
+					// scheme and the realm is what tells it which credential this
+					// service was refusing.
+					w.Header().Set("WWW-Authenticate", Challenge())
+				}
 				http.Error(w, resolveFailureMessage(status), status)
 				return
 			}
diff --git a/authn/resolver_test.go b/authn/resolver_test.go
index 041a9501a0d7974b81a9f60e711e06752a610d05..840a533433b91799108902c4cefeae4538a80927 100644
--- a/authn/resolver_test.go
+++ b/authn/resolver_test.go
@@ -263,6 +263,30 @@ 		t.Fatalf("code = %d, want 401", code)
 	}
 }
 
+// A 401 out of this middleware names the scheme and the realm, which is what an
+// agent library reads to know which credential was refused — and what a 503 must
+// not carry, since nothing about the credential was decided.
+func TestMiddleware_RefusalCarriesTheChallenge(t *testing.T) {
+	rs := newTestResolver(t)
+
+	h := rs.Middleware()(http.HandlerFunc(func(http.ResponseWriter, *http.Request) {}))
+	rec := httptest.NewRecorder()
+	h.ServeHTTP(rec, request("", map[string]string{"Authorization": "Bearer never-issued"}))
+	require.Equal(t, http.StatusUnauthorized, rec.Code)
+	assert.Equal(t, Challenge(), rec.Header().Get("WWW-Authenticate"))
+
+	f := newPlaneFixture(t, http.StatusNoContent)
+	f.users.err = errors.New("connection refused")
+	h = f.rs.Middleware()(http.HandlerFunc(func(http.ResponseWriter, *http.Request) {}))
+	rec = httptest.NewRecorder()
+	h.ServeHTTP(rec, request("", map[string]string{
+		"Authorization": "Bearer " + instanceToken("spec:read"),
+	}))
+	require.Equal(t, http.StatusServiceUnavailable, rec.Code)
+	assert.Empty(t, rec.Header().Get("WWW-Authenticate"),
+		"a backend outage says nothing about the credential")
+}
+
 // A user lookup that cannot answer is a backend outage, not a bad credential:
 // fail closed with a 503 rather than telling a live agent its token is bad.
 func TestMiddleware_BackendOutageIs503(t *testing.T) {
diff --git a/graph/server.go b/graph/server.go
index 280cd57b58daa49ebf7e4bdb13afe698db1c7104..ec2f2e62d04c19bbf655ab0c7796f64e122f0bb7 100644
--- a/graph/server.go
+++ b/graph/server.go
@@ -165,6 +165,7 @@ 	return http.HandlerFunc(func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
 		p := authn.PrincipalFromContext(r.Context())
 		if !p.CanRead() {
 			w.Header().Set("Content-Type", "text/plain; charset=utf-8")
+			w.Header().Set("WWW-Authenticate", authn.Challenge())
 			http.Error(w, "authentication required", http.StatusUnauthorized)
 			return
 		}
diff --git a/mcpsrv/mcpsrv.go b/mcpsrv/mcpsrv.go
index 132a4774bbf160124f655cfa92843f96424d2cd7..84a008d482d02eba36341f0931bd1f76cb78fb35 100644
--- a/mcpsrv/mcpsrv.go
+++ b/mcpsrv/mcpsrv.go
@@ -297,6 +297,7 @@ func Gate(next http.Handler) http.Handler {
 	return http.HandlerFunc(func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
 		if !authn.PrincipalFromContext(r.Context()).CanRead() {
 			w.Header().Set("Content-Type", "text/plain; charset=utf-8")
+			w.Header().Set("WWW-Authenticate", authn.Challenge())
 			http.Error(w, "authentication required", http.StatusUnauthorized)
 			return
 		}
diff --git a/web/handlers.go b/web/handlers.go
index 933634241fb82f953484508b039790c58992a5e7..9a8bc6282059e3c9725336b33415b55b8772fe41 100644
--- a/web/handlers.go
+++ b/web/handlers.go
@@ -95,6 +95,12 @@ 		s.loginRedirect(w, r)
 		return
 	}
 	w.Header().Set("Content-Type", "text/plain; charset=utf-8")
+	// The challenge belongs on the machine shape and not on the browser one:
+	// this is the branch a client asking for .md or .json takes, and RFC 9110
+	// asks a 401 to name the scheme it would accept. A browser never reaches
+	// here — it gets the redirect above, because the session is a cookie
+	// meta.sr.ht sets and there is no HTTP authentication scheme for it.
+	w.Header().Set("WWW-Authenticate", authn.Challenge())
 	http.Error(w, "authentication required", http.StatusUnauthorized)
 }