diff --git a/docker-compose.yml b/docker-compose.yml
index b3ebd56f22..bc5f890e6a 100644
--- a/docker-compose.yml
+++ b/docker-compose.yml
@@ -222,6 +222,14 @@ services:
     profiles: ["ollama"]
     volumes:
       - ollama-models:/root/.ollama
+    # The image ships the ollama CLI but no curl/wget, so probe the daemon through it directly instead of a
+    # raw HTTP request: `ollama list` only succeeds once the server is accepting API calls.
+    healthcheck:
+      test: ["CMD", "ollama", "list"]
+      interval: 10s
+      timeout: 5s
+      start_period: 15s
+      retries: 5
 
   # ── Litestream (--profile litestream) ─────────────────────────────────────
   # Continuous WAL backup of the SQLite DB to S3/B2/R2. Copy litestream.yml.example
diff --git a/test/unit/selfhost-compose-ollama-health.test.ts b/test/unit/selfhost-compose-ollama-health.test.ts
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..45622522f9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/test/unit/selfhost-compose-ollama-health.test.ts
@@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
+import { readFileSync } from "node:fs";
+import { parse } from "yaml";
+import { describe, expect, it } from "vitest";
+
+function readYaml(path: string): Record<string, unknown> {
+  const value = parse(readFileSync(path, "utf8"));
+  if (!value || typeof value !== "object" || Array.isArray(value)) {
+    throw new Error(`${path} must be a YAML object`);
+  }
+  return value as Record<string, unknown>;
+}
+
+// Pure structural checks only (no `docker` CLI invocation): the self-hosted runner container this actually
+// runs on does not have Docker-in-Docker access, so a test that shells out to `docker compose config`
+// would be unreliable/environment-dependent here (same constraint as docker-compose-override-example.test.ts).
+describe("docker-compose.yml — ollama healthcheck (#2504)", () => {
+  it("gives ollama a healthcheck so docker compose ps and a future depends_on can gate on it", () => {
+    const compose = readYaml("docker-compose.yml");
+    const services = (compose.services as Record<string, Record<string, unknown>>) ?? {};
+    const ollama = services.ollama ?? {};
+    const healthcheck = ollama.healthcheck as { test?: unknown[]; retries?: number };
+
+    // The image ships the ollama CLI but no curl/wget/nc, so `ollama list` is the only in-image probe that
+    // only succeeds once the daemon is actually serving API calls.
+    expect(healthcheck.test).toEqual(["CMD", "ollama", "list"]);
+    expect(healthcheck.retries).toBeGreaterThan(0);
+  });
+});