Gravitational waves as thermodynamic shear excitations in scalar-tensor gravity

Can a propagating spin--2 mode participate in a local thermodynamic process without assigning an autonomous entropy or a unique local energy to the wave itself? We show that this occurs in Jordan-frame scalar--tensor gravity, where a timelike scalar gradient defines an internal gravitational thermodynamic medium. Building on the first-order TT deformation--response relation, we identify the local shear power W_ϕ=πab(ϕ)σᵃᵇ from scalar-frame traction mechanics and show that its leading pure-TT contribution is second order, gauge invariant, and enters the exact scalar-sector energy balance. We further show that the same effective anisotropic stress controls the non-GR tensor damping, so the local thermodynamic exchange is directly encoded in gravitational-wave propagation. In geometric optics the corresponding ratio of shear work to GR-normalized tensor energy is controlled by the running effective Planck mass, linking the local process to the modified gravitational-wave luminosity distance. Finally, we extend this shear-excitation mechanism to nonminimally coupled scalars, metric $f(R)$ gravity, and viable luminal Horndeski theories, and identify the condition required for the same interpretation in more general tensor sectors.