diff --git a/examples/substrate-first-node.lock b/examples/substrate-first-node.lock
index 1e0fb3d..8975944 100644
--- a/examples/substrate-first-node.lock
+++ b/examples/substrate-first-node.lock
@@ -21,6 +21,11 @@
 // failed that way three times in the lab -- a flaky bootstrap that a second run always fixed,
 // which is the worst kind because it teaches people to run things twice.
 //
+// It failed a fourth time on 2026-08-30, on a loaded machine, and the report was `docker exited
+// 1:` with nothing after the colon. Raising the timeout again would treat the symptom; what makes
+// a retry the only available response is a timeout that reports nothing. So the wait now says
+// what it saw before giving up.
+//
 // The store's data is a NAMED VOLUME, not a directory on the machine. A directory the host
 // creates is owned by root, and the database runs as somebody else inside the container — so it
 // could not write, and the container crash-looped. A named volume lets the image set up its own
@@ -57,7 +62,7 @@
       "id": "store-ready",
       "type": "action",
       "in": "mesh-store",
-      "command": ["sh", "-c", "for i in $(seq 1 180); do pg_isready -U postgres >/dev/null 2>&1 && exit 0; sleep 1; done; exit 1"],
+      "command": ["sh", "-c", "for i in $(seq 1 180); do pg_isready -U postgres >/dev/null 2>&1 && exit 0; sleep 1; done; echo 'the store did not answer within 180s; its own last words follow'; pg_isready -U postgres; tail -n 20 /var/lib/postgresql/data/log/*.log 2>/dev/null; exit 1"],
       "verify": ["pg_isready", "-U", "postgres"]
     },
     {