diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index 0e25224..e2250a2 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -43,6 +43,11 @@ dependencies = [
     "pypdf>=4.3.0,<6",
     "pdfminer.six>=20240706",
     "docling>=2.0.0,<2.15",
+    # docling-core floated to 2.84 on a rebuild and dropped
+    # legacy_doc.base.BoundingBox, killing extraction at import time.
+    # 2.19.x verified live 2026-07-09: BoundingBox present and satisfies
+    # docling-ibm-models>=2.19 resolution.
+    "docling-core>=2.19.0,<2.20",
 
     # ML - pin Flag/sentence-transformers/transformers within the
     # families that have been verified against the reranker contract