diff --git a/.github/workflows/ci.yml b/.github/workflows/ci.yml
index b627cd4..3a124b2 100644
--- a/.github/workflows/ci.yml
+++ b/.github/workflows/ci.yml
@@ -27,9 +27,8 @@ jobs:
           if [ -f pyproject.toml ]; then
             pip install -e ".[dev]" 2>/dev/null || pip install -e .
           elif [ -f requirements.txt ]; then
-            pip install -r requirements.txt
+            pip install -r requirements.txt -r requirements-dev.txt
           fi
-          pip install ruff pytest
 
       - name: Lint with ruff
         run: ruff check .
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 937b041..be2cdf8 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -237,6 +237,17 @@ pip install -r requirements.txt
 
 > `sentence-transformers` is required for cross-encoder reranking (`rerank=True` in `retrieve()`). It is also used by the test suite. If reranking is not needed you can omit it — the engine degrades gracefully to FAISS order when the model is unavailable.
 
+`requirements.txt` alone is enough to run the app — it does not install anything needed to run the test suite.
+
+### Running Tests
+
+If you're contributing and want to run `pytest` locally, also install the dev/test dependencies:
+
+```bash
+pip install -r requirements.txt -r requirements-dev.txt
+pytest
+```
+
 ---
 
 # Configuration
diff --git a/requirements-dev.txt b/requirements-dev.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..63602d0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/requirements-dev.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,12 @@
+# Dev/test-only dependencies. Install alongside requirements.txt to run the
+# test suite locally or in CI:
+#
+#   pip install -r requirements.txt -r requirements-dev.txt
+#
+# requirements.txt alone is sufficient to run the app; nothing here is
+# imported by application code.
+pytest==9.0.2
+pytest-asyncio==1.3.0
+pytest-cov==7.0.0
+httpx==0.28.1
+ruff==0.16.1