diff --git a/src/hooks/atlas/index.ts b/src/hooks/atlas/index.ts
index f35d70c2..fad30757 100644
--- a/src/hooks/atlas/index.ts
+++ b/src/hooks/atlas/index.ts
@@ -68,7 +68,7 @@ const VERIFICATION_REMINDER = `**MANDATORY: WHAT YOU MUST DO RIGHT NOW**
 
 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
 
-⚠️ CRITICAL: Subagents FREQUENTLY LIE about completion.
+CRITICAL: Subagents FREQUENTLY LIE about completion.
 Tests FAILING, code has ERRORS, implementation INCOMPLETE - but they say "done".
 
 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
@@ -107,7 +107,7 @@ const ORCHESTRATOR_DELEGATION_REQUIRED = `
 
 ---
 
-⚠️⚠️⚠️ ${createSystemDirective(SystemDirectiveTypes.DELEGATION_REQUIRED)} ⚠️⚠️⚠️
+${createSystemDirective(SystemDirectiveTypes.DELEGATION_REQUIRED)}
 
 **STOP. YOU ARE VIOLATING ORCHESTRATOR PROTOCOL.**
 
@@ -117,7 +117,7 @@ You (Atlas) are attempting to directly modify a file outside \`.sisyphus/\`.
 
 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
 
-🚫 **THIS IS FORBIDDEN** (except for VERIFICATION purposes)
+**THIS IS FORBIDDEN** (except for VERIFICATION purposes)
 
 As an ORCHESTRATOR, you MUST:
 1. **DELEGATE** all implementation work via \`delegate_task\`
@@ -148,7 +148,7 @@ delegate_task(
 )
 \`\`\`
 
-⚠️⚠️⚠️ DELEGATE. DON'T IMPLEMENT. ⚠️⚠️⚠️
+DELEGATE. DON'T IMPLEMENT.
 
 ---
 `
diff --git a/src/hooks/background-compaction/index.ts b/src/hooks/background-compaction/index.ts
index 3bb32a46..e03d74e8 100644
--- a/src/hooks/background-compaction/index.ts
+++ b/src/hooks/background-compaction/index.ts
@@ -71,8 +71,8 @@ export function createBackgroundCompactionHook(manager: BackgroundManager) {
         sections.push("## Recently Completed Tasks")
         sections.push("")
         for (const t of completed) {
-          const statusEmoji = t.status === "completed" ? "✅" : t.status === "error" ? "❌" : "⏱️"
-          sections.push(`- ${statusEmoji} **\`${t.id}\`**: ${t.description}`)
+          const statusLabel = t.status === "completed" ? "[DONE]" : t.status === "error" ? "[ERROR]" : "[PENDING]"
+          sections.push(`- ${statusLabel} **\`${t.id}\`**: ${t.description}`)
         }
         sections.push("")
       }
diff --git a/src/hooks/claude-code-hooks/index.ts b/src/hooks/claude-code-hooks/index.ts
index 0153eb6e..da4d6208 100644
--- a/src/hooks/claude-code-hooks/index.ts
+++ b/src/hooks/claude-code-hooks/index.ts
@@ -218,7 +218,7 @@ export function createClaudeCodeHooksHook(
             .showToast({
               body: {
                 title: "PreToolUse Hook Executed",
-                message: `✗ ${result.toolName ?? input.tool} ${result.hookName ?? "hook"}: BLOCKED ${result.elapsedMs ?? 0}ms\n${result.inputLines ?? ""}`,
+                message: `[BLOCKED] ${result.toolName ?? input.tool} ${result.hookName ?? "hook"}: ${result.elapsedMs ?? 0}ms\n${result.inputLines ?? ""}`,
                 variant: "error",
                 duration: 4000,
               },
diff --git a/src/hooks/non-interactive-env/index.ts b/src/hooks/non-interactive-env/index.ts
index e6c7e56c..5c86fcef 100644
--- a/src/hooks/non-interactive-env/index.ts
+++ b/src/hooks/non-interactive-env/index.ts
@@ -37,7 +37,7 @@ export function createNonInteractiveEnvHook(_ctx: PluginInput) {
 
       const bannedCmd = detectBannedCommand(command)
       if (bannedCmd) {
-        output.message = `⚠️ Warning: '${bannedCmd}' is an interactive command that may hang in non-interactive environments.`
+        output.message = `Warning: '${bannedCmd}' is an interactive command that may hang in non-interactive environments.`
       }
 
       // Only prepend env vars for git commands (editor blocking, pager, etc.)