diff --git a/.gitea/workflows/rolling-release.yml b/.gitea/workflows/rolling-release.yml
index 41b50e1..6b244f6 100644
--- a/.gitea/workflows/rolling-release.yml
+++ b/.gitea/workflows/rolling-release.yml
@@ -11,6 +11,10 @@ jobs:
     runs-on: ubuntu-latest
     steps:
       - uses: actions/checkout@v4
+      - name: Install native QVAC runtime libraries
+        run: |
+          sudo apt-get update
+          sudo apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends libvulkan1 mesa-vulkan-drivers
       - uses: actions/setup-node@v4
         with:
           node-version: 22
diff --git a/docs/voice-pipeline.md b/docs/voice-pipeline.md
index 8ed0283..55b29f8 100644
--- a/docs/voice-pipeline.md
+++ b/docs/voice-pipeline.md
@@ -60,8 +60,8 @@ QVAC TTS numeric arrays contain signed 16-bit samples, not bytes. Supertonic
 plays at 44.1 kHz. Captured utterances use the non-streaming transcription API
 because local VAD already supplies utterance boundaries.
 
-CI pins the native engines, verifies their registration inside the staged
-release, and synthesizes a sentence then transcribes it with Whisper. Voice
+CI installs the Vulkan runtime required by the native addons, pins the native
+engines, verifies their registration inside the staged release, and synthesizes a sentence then transcribes it with Whisper. Voice
 models download into a temporary CI cache. Both the archive and Debian package
 include the validated Bare runtime and native dependencies. The release gate
 requires model download access; it fails rather than publishing an untested
diff --git a/packaging/voice-runtime-smoke.js b/packaging/voice-runtime-smoke.js
index c9a70a4..54462b8 100644
--- a/packaging/voice-runtime-smoke.js
+++ b/packaging/voice-runtime-smoke.js
@@ -1,5 +1,10 @@
 import { qvacSdk } from '../daemon/qvac-master.js';
-const sdk = await qvacSdk();
+let sdk;
+try {
+  sdk = await qvacSdk();
+} catch (error) {
+  throw new Error(`Voice runtime could not initialize native QVAC plugins. Install libvulkan1 and a Vulkan driver on the build host. ${error.message}`, { cause: error });
+}
 for (const type of ['llamacpp-completion', 'whispercpp-transcription', 'tts-ggml']) {
   if (!sdk.hasPlugin(type)) throw new Error(`Release is missing registered plugin: ${type}`);
 }