diff --git a/app/config/logger.js b/app/config/logger.js
index 10de276..1bcdcfd 100644
--- a/app/config/logger.js
+++ b/app/config/logger.js
@@ -18,13 +18,26 @@ const level = process.env.LOG_LEVEL || 'info';
 
 let transport;
 if (process.env.LOG_PRETTY === '1') {
+    // Check `pino-pretty` is actually installed BEFORE handing the
+    // transport config to pino. Assigning the object literal alone
+    // never throws — pino lazy-resolves the `target` module later
+    // and emits a cryptic error on startup if it's missing. The
+    // `require.resolve` synchronously throws MODULE_NOT_FOUND when
+    // the module isn't on disk, so the catch below fires cleanly
+    // and we fall through to default JSON output, matching the
+    // "pino-pretty is NOT a required dependency" header comment.
     try {
+        require.resolve('pino-pretty');
         transport = {
             target: 'pino-pretty',
             options: { colorize: true, translateTime: 'SYS:standard' },
         };
-    } catch (_) {
-        // pino-pretty not installed — fall through to JSON output.
+    } catch (_err) {
+        // pino-pretty not installed — silently fall through to JSON
+        // output. We don't warn here because the only consumer of
+        // LOG_PRETTY=1 is interactive dev, and a noisy stderr line
+        // would clutter the very output the operator was trying to
+        // make readable.
     }
 }