diff --git a/tidal-server/src/cluster/election_driver.rs b/tidal-server/src/cluster/election_driver.rs
index 44e9961..e49ea4b 100644
--- a/tidal-server/src/cluster/election_driver.rs
+++ b/tidal-server/src/cluster/election_driver.rs
@@ -904,6 +904,16 @@ pub fn start(
                     // bounded grace elapses. A cheap no-op when nothing is pending
                     // (only the leader arms a grace, on a remove verb).
                     node.poll_deferred_retires();
+                    // Refresh the frontier pair (flushed high-water mark +
+                    // quorum commit index) on the tick, for the same reason
+                    // m12p5 seeds the lag gauge from the heartbeat: the tick
+                    // flows even when no writes do. Publishing only on a
+                    // satisfied `ack=quorum` wait left both gauges at 0 for
+                    // the whole life of an `ack=leader` workload while
+                    // `/cluster/status` reported a live commit index. Two
+                    // relaxed stores, throttled by nothing — cheaper than the
+                    // breaker refresh above.
+                    node.set_frontier_gauges();
                 }
             }
             tracing::info!("election driver stopped");
diff --git a/tidal-server/src/cluster/node.rs b/tidal-server/src/cluster/node.rs
index 086e69e..cff76df 100644
--- a/tidal-server/src/cluster/node.rs
+++ b/tidal-server/src/cluster/node.rs
@@ -1811,7 +1811,7 @@ impl ShardReplica {
     /// flushed frontier claimed the entire relay log as lag: on the fleet's
     /// three-voter cluster that read as 13.5M events behind and held
     /// `TidalDBClusterQuorumLag` critical while every region sat at lag 0.
-    fn set_frontier_gauges(&self) {
+    pub(crate) fn set_frontier_gauges(&self) {
         let flushed = self.ship_feed.flushed_seq();
         let commit = if self.commit.needed_peers() == 0 {
             flushed