diff --git a/understand-anything-plugin/packages/dashboard/src/store.ts b/understand-anything-plugin/packages/dashboard/src/store.ts
index a8cfdf1..ec833d4 100644
--- a/understand-anything-plugin/packages/dashboard/src/store.ts
+++ b/understand-anything-plugin/packages/dashboard/src/store.ts
@@ -387,7 +387,17 @@ export const useDashboardStore = create<DashboardStore>()((set, get) => ({
       expandedContainers: new Set(),
     }),
 
-  setFocusNode: (nodeId) => set({ focusNodeId: nodeId, selectedNodeId: nodeId }),
+  setFocusNode: (nodeId) =>
+    set({
+      focusNodeId: nodeId,
+      selectedNodeId: nodeId,
+      // Focus mode narrows filteredGraphNodes to focus + 1-hop; the
+      // surviving containers have a subset of their original children,
+      // and the cache must not return positions for filtered-out ids.
+      containerLayoutCache: new Map(),
+      containerSizeMemory: new Map(),
+      expandedContainers: new Set(),
+    }),
   setSearchMode: (mode) => set({ searchMode: mode }),
   setSearchQuery: (query) => {
     const engine = get().searchEngine;
diff --git a/understand-anything-plugin/packages/dashboard/src/utils/layout.ts b/understand-anything-plugin/packages/dashboard/src/utils/layout.ts
index cd73fb6..b35328c 100644
--- a/understand-anything-plugin/packages/dashboard/src/utils/layout.ts
+++ b/understand-anything-plugin/packages/dashboard/src/utils/layout.ts
@@ -21,6 +21,11 @@ export const PORTAL_NODE_HEIGHT = 80;
 
 /**
  * Synchronous dagre layout — used for small graphs.
+ *
+ * @deprecated The dashboard's structural views all use ELK now
+ * (`applyElkLayout` from `./elk-layout`). This helper is kept for one
+ * release to allow a quick fallback if ELK has a regression. Slated for
+ * removal in the version after layout migration is verified stable.
  */
 export function applyDagreLayout(
   nodes: Node[],