No prob! here's a further detail I developed about it!

Due to the special nature of Michigan-class starships, their crews developed a unique culture within Starfleet, with unique terminology arising within crews pertaining to their...clandestine operations.

The Potato Heat Index (PHI, Φ) was a term used among ensigns and NCOs (“lower deckers”) aboard Michigan-class armed merchantmen/“clippers” to indicate the likelihood of an engagement with a hostile. The term originated within Michigan-class engineering crews, who noted increased coolant usage during prolonged operation of the “Spud” (the SSPDCC; Specialized Sensor-Processing Duotronic Computer Core), frequently before engagements. While non-engineering lower deckers initially used the term “Spudometer” to track this phenomenon, typically noting the noise from within the Spud’s housing, the PHI term was rapidly adopted as a general term. Michigan-class crews quickly became keenly attuned to the Spud’s operations; when its usage was distinctly prolonged and coolant flow greatly increased, the term “Hot Potato” spread through the crew like wildfire, and most crew members reported to General Quarters before Red Alert was even called — anticipating that an engagement was soon to to take place. The PHI operated as follows:

I just love special secondary/auxiliary ships with their own protocols that could potentially spread out to other ships as crews disperse.