diff --git a/.gitea/workflows/ci.yml b/.gitea/workflows/ci.yml
index 9863c8c..d0e5756 100644
--- a/.gitea/workflows/ci.yml
+++ b/.gitea/workflows/ci.yml
@@ -187,7 +187,7 @@ jobs:
           chmod +x /usr/local/bin/mcpctl
 
       - name: Start mcplocal
-        run: node src/mcplocal/dist/main.js &
+        run: nohup node src/mcplocal/dist/main.js > /tmp/mcplocal.log 2>&1 &
 
       - name: Wait for mcplocal
         run: |
@@ -225,15 +225,20 @@ jobs:
 
       - name: Run smoke tests
         # Exclude tests that need a running MCP server instance (Docker) or
-        # LLM providers — CI has neither.  They crash mcplocal when it tries
-        # to proxy to a non-existent container.
+        # LLM providers — CI has neither.  --no-file-parallelism avoids
+        # concurrent requests crashing mcplocal.
         run: >-
           pnpm --filter mcplocal exec vitest run
           --config vitest.smoke.config.ts
+          --no-file-parallelism
           --exclude '**/security.test.ts'
           --exclude '**/audit.test.ts'
           --exclude '**/proxy-pipeline.test.ts'
 
+      - name: Dump mcplocal log on failure
+        if: failure()
+        run: cat /tmp/mcplocal.log || true
+
   # ── Build & package RPM ───────────────────────────────────
 
   build: