diff --git a/clusters/base/apps/markdown-vault-mcp/helmrelease.yaml b/clusters/base/apps/markdown-vault-mcp/helmrelease.yaml
index 62956c9..6880cbd 100644
--- a/clusters/base/apps/markdown-vault-mcp/helmrelease.yaml
+++ b/clusters/base/apps/markdown-vault-mcp/helmrelease.yaml
@@ -44,6 +44,16 @@ spec:
                     name: markdown-vault-mcp-secrets
                     key: BEARER_TOKEN
             probes:
+              # first boot downloads embedding models from HuggingFace Hub
+              # and builds the vector index/embeddings before binding the
+              # port - the default liveness probe budget (periodSeconds=10,
+              # failureThreshold=3 = 30s) isn't enough, so it gets killed
+              # mid-startup on every restart, in an endless loop.
+              startup:
+                enabled: true
+                spec:
+                  periodSeconds: 5
+                  failureThreshold: 36
               liveness:
                 enabled: true
               readiness: