diff --git a/pkg/Dockerfile b/pkg/Dockerfile
index 0eb3dd0..5d75ad4 100644
--- a/pkg/Dockerfile
+++ b/pkg/Dockerfile
@@ -14,6 +14,9 @@ COPY requirements.txt .
 # Install dependencies using buildkit cache
 RUN --mount=type=cache,target=/root/.cache/pip pip install -r requirements.txt
 
+# Pre-download the embedding model into the image to avoid runtime downloads
+RUN python -c "from fastembed import TextEmbedding; TextEmbedding(model_name='BAAI/bge-small-en-v1.5')"
+
 # Copy the source code
 COPY src/ ./src/