diff --git a/.gitea/workflows/qa.yml b/.gitea/workflows/qa.yml
index 154429e..0979a3b 100644
--- a/.gitea/workflows/qa.yml
+++ b/.gitea/workflows/qa.yml
@@ -66,4 +66,13 @@ jobs:
       - run: php -l public/api/index.php && php -l ops/timeweb/api-proxy.php
       - run: php tests/proxy-http.php app && php tests/proxy-http.php api
       - run: npx playwright install --with-deps chromium webkit
-      - run: npm run test:e2e
+      - name: Run e2e tests
+        # This VPS (2 CPU / 4GB) also runs Gitea + Postgres + Caddy. Playwright's
+        # default worker count (one per CPU, all projects in parallel) spins up
+        # chromium and webkit processes concurrently and has twice now driven the
+        # host into an unresponsive state (server needed a hard reboot) partway
+        # through this step. --workers=1 runs the same test suite serially
+        # instead of in parallel — slower, but it keeps peak memory/CPU to one
+        # browser process at a time. GitHub-hosted runners have real headroom,
+        # so .github/workflows/qa.yml keeps full parallelism.
+        run: npx playwright test --config=tests/playwright.config.mjs --workers=1