diff --git a/changes/fix-startup-pause-untokenized-release.md b/changes/fix-startup-pause-untokenized-release.md
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..fa20d8c2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/changes/fix-startup-pause-untokenized-release.md
@@ -0,0 +1,4 @@
+type: fixed
+area: overlay
+
+- Fixed `mpv.pauseUntilOverlayReady` releasing playback seconds before tokenization warmup finished: startup subtitle priming emits the current cue untokenized so the overlay can paint early, and that emission was treated as the autoplay-readiness signal as soon as the overlay window loaded. The autoplay gate now ignores untokenized subtitle payloads while tokenization warmup is pending, so playback resumes only after the first tokenized delivery (or the post-warmup release). Most visible when resuming mid-episode or when a subtitle cue starts within the first two seconds.
diff --git a/release/release-notes.md b/release/release-notes.md
deleted file mode 100644
index cb29cc55..00000000
--- a/release/release-notes.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,89 +0,0 @@
-## Highlights
-### Added
-
-- **Sentence Audio Normalization**
-  - Generated sentence audio is now normalized to -23 LUFS by default, giving mined clips consistent volume across shows.
-  - Clips captured from playback can also mirror mpv's software volume curve, with a limiter to prevent clipping when boosted.
-  - Both behaviors are controlled independently and can be turned off in the Anki Connect media settings.
-
-- **Watch History Browser**
-  - Added `subminer -H` / `--history` to browse local watch history, replay the last episode, continue to the next one, or jump to any past episode.
-  - Works with fzf or rofi; the rofi picker shows AniList cover art already stored in the stats database.
-
-### Changed
-
-- **Known-Word Highlighting Accuracy**
-  - Highlighting now compares subtitle and Anki-card readings, so it no longer confuses homographs like 床/とこ vs 床/ゆか or unrelated kanji that happen to share a reading.
-  - Standalone suffix words such as さん or れる are now excluded from JLPT/frequency/N+1 annotations by default, matching how particles and interjections are already treated (configurable if you'd rather keep them annotated).
-  - Cards without readings still fall back to word-only matching; the highlighting cache upgrades automatically with no action needed.
-
-- **Stats Trend Charts**
-  - Overhauled trend charts with persisted title visibility, per-chart title limits, "top" and "most recent" ranking modes, an option to show or hide empty days, calendar-aligned periods, and sortable multi-column tooltips.
-
-- **New App Icon**
-  - Replaced the SubMiner icon with new pixel-art submarine artwork contributed by an anonymous community member, now used across the app icon, tray, notifications, README, docs site, and stats page.
-
-- **Launcher Preview Layout**
-  - fzf previews now sit below the launcher menu instead of beside it, giving long titles and metadata more horizontal room.
-
-### Fixed
-
-- **Character Name Recognition**
-  - Character dictionaries now correctly split unspaced AniList native names and validate readings, so overlay portraits, highlights, and hover lookups work reliably even without MeCab installed.
-  - Name matches survive punctuation and unmatched text and no longer get overridden by generic dictionary matches or wrongly split from longer words like 空気.
-  - Existing installs regenerate automatically and upgrade to exact splits once MeCab is available — no action needed.
-
-- **Frequency & JLPT Highlighting Coverage**
-  - Content adverbs (確かに, やはり) and kanji nouns MeCab tags as non-independent (日, 点, 以外) are now correctly included in frequency/JLPT highlighting and vocabulary stats.
-  - Lexicalized kana expressions like かといって keep their frequency annotations, while interjections, pronouns, and pure grammar fragments are still filtered out as noise.
-
-- **Unparsed Text Hover Lookup**
-  - Subtitle text Yomitan can't fully parse — truncated inflections like とこ戻ろ… or elongation runs like ぅ～ — is hoverable again for dictionary lookup.
-  - These runs stay excluded from frequency/JLPT highlighting and vocabulary stats, same as bracketed captions and punctuation-only text.
-
-- **Karaoke-Style Secondary Subtitles**
-  - Secondary subtitles no longer flood the screen with dozens of one-syllable lines during karaoke-style openings and endings.
-  - Repeated events now collapse into a single line, and the secondary subtitle area stays capped to a strip at the top.
-
-- **Kiku Field Grouping Reliability**
-  - The manual field-grouping dialog now stays above fullscreen mpv on Hyprland/Wayland and keeps working across repeated attempts.
-  - Abandoned grouping windows close automatically after a timeout or failure, and each attempt now reports a clear success or error, including when the original card can no longer be loaded.
-
-- **Background Stats Server Startup**
-  - Background `subminer app` launches now start the stats server automatically when enabled, and skip startup if one is already running.
-
-- **AniList Cover Art Timing**
-  - Stats now fetches the best-match AniList cover as soon as a new series starts playing, so artwork appears in the timeline immediately instead of only after visiting the series page.
-  - Existing series missing art get backfilled automatically on the next Stats page visit.
-
-- **YouTube Direct Stream Playback**
-  - Fixed direct YouTube stream extraction so mpv's EDL stream URLs are parsed correctly, preventing corrupted signed video URLs and the resulting ffmpeg 403 errors.
-
-## What's Changed
-
-- fix(youtube): parse mpv EDL stream URLs with byte-length guards by @ksyasuda in #134
-- Normalize generated Anki audio by default by @ksyasuda in #135
-- feat(launcher): add -H/--history command to browse local watch history by @ksyasuda in #136
-- fix(overlay): prevent field grouping modal from freezing overlay on Hyprland by @ksyasuda in #138
-- fix(overlay): collapse karaoke syllable spam in secondary subtitles by @ksyasuda in #139
-- feat(stats): Trends dashboard overhaul — title visibility, ranking modes, calendar-accurate windows, tooltips by @ksyasuda in #140
-- feat(branding): replace app icon with contributed pixel-art set by @ksyasuda in #141
-- feat(anki): reading-aware known-word matching (cache v3) by @ksyasuda in #142
-- fix(stats): start stats server on background app launch by @ksyasuda in #144
-- fix(tokenizer): keep unparsed Yomitan tokens hoverable by @ksyasuda in #145
-- fix(overlay): resolve unspaced Japanese name splits and scan recovery by @ksyasuda in #146
-- fix(tokenizer): prevent grammar tokens from borrowing known-word highlight via unrelated readings by @ksyasuda in #147
-- fix(stats): fetch cover art eagerly at session start instead of on series page visit by @ksyasuda in #148
-
-## Installation
-
-See the README and docs/installation guide for full setup steps.
-
-## Assets
-
-- Linux: `SubMiner.AppImage`
-- macOS: `SubMiner-*.dmg` and `SubMiner-*.zip`
-- Windows: `SubMiner-*.exe` and `SubMiner-*-win.zip`
-- Optional extras: `subminer-assets.tar.gz` and the `subminer` launcher
-
-Note: the `subminer` wrapper script uses Bun (`#!/usr/bin/env bun`), so `bun` must be installed and on `PATH`.
diff --git a/src/main.ts b/src/main.ts
index 4edd4282..e937b454 100644
--- a/src/main.ts
+++ b/src/main.ts
@@ -1275,6 +1275,8 @@ const autoplayReadyGate = createAutoplayReadyGate({
   signalPluginAutoplayReady: () => {
     sendMpvCommandRuntime(appState.mpvClient, ['script-message', 'subminer-autoplay-ready']);
   },
+  // Deferred: isTokenizationWarmupReady is assigned during composeMpvRuntimeHandlers below.
+  isTokenizationReady: () => isTokenizationWarmupReady(),
   requestOverlayPointerRecovery: () => {
     if (process.platform !== 'darwin' || !overlayManager.getVisibleOverlayVisible()) {
       return;
diff --git a/src/main/main-wiring.test.ts b/src/main/main-wiring.test.ts
index dfc699b3..3fff4289 100644
--- a/src/main/main-wiring.test.ts
+++ b/src/main/main-wiring.test.ts
@@ -278,7 +278,15 @@ test('startup autoplay release is tied to visible overlay measurement readiness'
 
   assert.ok(gateBlock);
   assert.match(gateBlock, /isSignalTargetReady:\s*\(signal\) =>/);
-  assert.doesNotMatch(gateBlock, /isTokenizationWarmupReady\(\)/);
+  // Untokenized signals are filtered by the gate's isTokenizationReady dep, not
+  // by the target-readiness predicate (which must stay warmup-free so warm and
+  // tokenized releases are never deferred behind the global warmup flag).
+  assert.match(gateBlock, /isTokenizationReady:\s*\(\) => isTokenizationWarmupReady\(\)/);
+  const signalTargetReadyBlock = gateBlock.match(
+    /isSignalTargetReady:\s*\(signal\) =>(?<body>[\s\S]*?)\n  schedule:/,
+  )?.groups?.body;
+  assert.ok(signalTargetReadyBlock);
+  assert.doesNotMatch(signalTargetReadyBlock, /isTokenizationWarmupReady\(\)/);
   assert.match(gateBlock, /isVisibleOverlayAutoplayTargetReady\(/);
   assert.match(gateBlock, /getLatestVisibleMeasurement:/);
 
diff --git a/src/main/runtime/autoplay-ready-gate.test.ts b/src/main/runtime/autoplay-ready-gate.test.ts
index edddd6c3..c2945e7f 100644
--- a/src/main/runtime/autoplay-ready-gate.test.ts
+++ b/src/main/runtime/autoplay-ready-gate.test.ts
@@ -542,3 +542,79 @@ test('autoplay ready gate passes the pending subtitle signal to the readiness pr
     [['script-message', 'subminer-autoplay-ready']],
   );
 });
+
+function createTokenizationGateHarness(deps: { isTokenizationReady: () => boolean }) {
+  const commands: Array<Array<string | boolean>> = [];
+  const gate = createAutoplayReadyGate({
+    isAppOwnedFlowInFlight: () => false,
+    getCurrentMediaPath: () => '/media/video.mkv',
+    getCurrentVideoPath: () => null,
+    getPlaybackPaused: () => true,
+    getMpvClient: () =>
+      ({
+        connected: true,
+        requestProperty: async () => true,
+        send: ({ command }: { command: Array<string | boolean> }) => {
+          commands.push(command);
+        },
+      }) as never,
+    signalPluginAutoplayReady: () => {
+      commands.push(['script-message', 'subminer-autoplay-ready']);
+    },
+    isTokenizationReady: deps.isTokenizationReady,
+    schedule: (callback) => {
+      queueMicrotask(callback);
+      return 1 as never;
+    },
+    logDebug: () => {},
+  });
+  return { gate, commands };
+}
+
+test('autoplay ready gate ignores untokenized signals while tokenization warmup is pending', async () => {
+  const { gate, commands } = createTokenizationGateHarness({
+    isTokenizationReady: () => false,
+  });
+
+  gate.maybeSignalPluginAutoplayReady({ text: '字幕', tokens: null }, { forceWhilePaused: true });
+  await new Promise((resolve) => setTimeout(resolve, 0));
+
+  assert.deepEqual(commands, []);
+});
+
+test('autoplay ready gate releases tokenized signals while tokenization warmup is pending', async () => {
+  const { gate, commands } = createTokenizationGateHarness({
+    isTokenizationReady: () => false,
+  });
+
+  gate.maybeSignalPluginAutoplayReady(
+    { text: '字幕', tokens: [{ surface: '字幕' }] as never },
+    { forceWhilePaused: true },
+  );
+  await new Promise((resolve) => setTimeout(resolve, 0));
+
+  assert.deepEqual(
+    commands.filter((command) => command[0] === 'script-message'),
+    [['script-message', 'subminer-autoplay-ready']],
+  );
+});
+
+test('autoplay ready gate releases untokenized signals once tokenization warmup is ready', async () => {
+  let tokenizationReady = false;
+  const { gate, commands } = createTokenizationGateHarness({
+    isTokenizationReady: () => tokenizationReady,
+  });
+
+  gate.maybeSignalPluginAutoplayReady({ text: '字幕', tokens: null }, { forceWhilePaused: true });
+  await new Promise((resolve) => setTimeout(resolve, 0));
+  assert.deepEqual(commands, []);
+
+  tokenizationReady = true;
+  gate.maybeSignalPluginAutoplayReady({ text: '字幕', tokens: null }, { forceWhilePaused: true });
+  await new Promise((resolve) => setTimeout(resolve, 0));
+
+  assert.deepEqual(
+    commands.filter((command) => command[0] === 'script-message'),
+    [['script-message', 'subminer-autoplay-ready']],
+  );
+});
diff --git a/src/main/runtime/autoplay-ready-gate.ts b/src/main/runtime/autoplay-ready-gate.ts
index a5b3bd7f..704c8f90 100644
--- a/src/main/runtime/autoplay-ready-gate.ts
+++ b/src/main/runtime/autoplay-ready-gate.ts
@@ -26,6 +26,7 @@ export type AutoplayReadyGateDeps = {
   getPlaybackPaused: () => boolean | null;
   getMpvClient: () => MpvClientLike | null;
   signalPluginAutoplayReady: () => void;
+  isTokenizationReady?: () => boolean;
   requestOverlayPointerRecovery?: () => void;
   onAutoplayReadyReleased?: (signal: AutoplayReadySignal) => void;
   isSignalTargetReady?: (signal: AutoplayReadySignal) => boolean;
@@ -217,6 +218,15 @@ export function createAutoplayReadyGate(deps: AutoplayReadyGateDeps) {
     if (!payload.text.trim()) {
       return;
     }
+    // Untokenized payloads (startup subtitle priming, tokenizer fallbacks) must
+    // not release the startup pause gate while tokenization warmup is pending —
+    // the tokenized delivery or the post-warmup release signals readiness later.
+    if (payload.tokens === null && deps.isTokenizationReady && !deps.isTokenizationReady()) {
+      deps.logDebug(
+        '[autoplay-ready] ignored untokenized signal while tokenization warmup is pending',
+      );
+      return;
+    }
 
     maybeReleaseAutoplayReadySignal({
       mediaPath: getSignalMediaPath(),