diff --git a/docker-compose.yml b/docker-compose.yml
index 55ca1b5..b084ce1 100644
--- a/docker-compose.yml
+++ b/docker-compose.yml
@@ -83,6 +83,18 @@ services:
     command: ["api"]
     stop_signal: SIGTERM
     stop_grace_period: 30s
+    # Exists so nomos can wait for the API to actually answer rather than just
+    # for its container to exist — see nomos's depends_on below. wget is
+    # BusyBox's, already in the alpine runtime image, so this adds no
+    # dependency. /healthz pings the DB, so "healthy" means genuinely ready.
+    healthcheck:
+      test: ["CMD", "wget", "-q", "-O", "-", "http://127.0.0.1:8090/healthz"]
+      interval: 5s
+      timeout: 3s
+      retries: 10
+      # Migrations and seed run before this container, but the first bind can
+      # still take a moment; failures inside the start period don't count.
+      start_period: 10s
 
   # Scheduler (Phase 3) — observe loop
   scheduler:
@@ -139,7 +151,12 @@ services:
     profiles: ["full"]
     depends_on:
       api:
-        condition: service_started
+        # service_started only waits for the container to exist, so nomos came
+        # up while the API was still binding :8090, failed its MCP initialize,
+        # exited 1, and crash-looped for ~25s on every single deploy. It always
+        # recovered, which is exactly why it went unnoticed. service_healthy
+        # waits for the API to actually answer.
+        condition: service_healthy
     environment:
       NOMOS_MCP_URL: http://api:8090/mcp
       NOMOS_AGENT_SLUG: agent:nomos