diff --git a/.forgejo/workflows/synthetic.yaml b/.forgejo/workflows/synthetic.yaml
index a90ec0a..2ad9839 100644
--- a/.forgejo/workflows/synthetic.yaml
+++ b/.forgejo/workflows/synthetic.yaml
@@ -1,4 +1,5 @@
 # Public synthetic suite. Do not fetch the OnCo corpus or its data license.
+# The runner image already has Node. setup-python stalls while downloading a toolchain, so Python packages are installed with pip.
 name: synthetic
 
 on:
@@ -14,16 +15,11 @@ jobs:
     steps:
       - name: Checkout
         uses: actions/checkout@v4
-      - name: Python
-        uses: actions/setup-python@v5
-        with:
-          python-version: "3.12"
-      - name: Node
-        uses: actions/setup-node@v4
-        with:
-          node-version: "22"
       - name: Python dependencies
-        run: python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt
+        run: |
+          apt-get update
+          apt-get install -y python3-pip
+          python3 -m pip install --break-system-packages -r requirements.txt
       - name: UI dependencies
         working-directory: ui
         run: npm ci