diff --git a/VERSION b/VERSION
index 48f7a71..a37255a 100644
--- a/VERSION
+++ b/VERSION
@@ -1 +1 @@
-0.28.1
+0.28.2
diff --git a/docker-compose.yml b/docker-compose.yml
index fe0d6b0..76fb9f4 100644
--- a/docker-compose.yml
+++ b/docker-compose.yml
@@ -115,7 +115,10 @@ services:
       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
+      # The api also retries Infisical at startup (4x with backoff) before
+      # binding :8090 — when Infisical is unreachable that adds ~60s, so the
+      # start period must cover it or nomos (depends_on: api-healthy) fails.
+      start_period: 90s
 
   # Scheduler (Phase 3) — observe loop
   scheduler: