diff --git a/Dockerfile b/Dockerfile
index 92675ca..721c6f6 100644
--- a/Dockerfile
+++ b/Dockerfile
@@ -12,6 +12,14 @@ COPY package.json package-lock.json ./
 RUN npm ci
 
 COPY . .
+# `next build`'s page-data collection spins up several parallel workers that
+# each import the db client at module-eval time. If data/db.sqlite doesn't
+# exist yet, every worker races to create it from scratch — that race is at
+# the file-creation level, before our code ever gets to run a busy_timeout
+# pragma, so it can throw SQLITE_BUSY (or worse) independent of pragma order.
+# Migrating first — as its own isolated, single-process step — means the
+# workers only ever see an already-existing, already-stable file.
+RUN mkdir -p data && npm run db:migrate
 RUN npm run build
 
 ENV NODE_ENV=production