diff --git a/.claude/settings.local.json b/.claude/settings.local.json
index 47ca751..2fc4558 100644
--- a/.claude/settings.local.json
+++ b/.claude/settings.local.json
@@ -10,7 +10,8 @@
       "Bash(python *)",
       "Bash(DATABASE_URL=\"sqlite+aiosqlite:////tmp/claude-1000/-home-iroddis-dev-armament-fitguide/41e5e14d-88fe-45e7-ba3a-be5a2cbde2cd/scratchpad/mig_test.db\" uv run alembic upgrade head)",
       "Bash(sqlite3 /tmp/claude-1000/-home-iroddis-dev-armament-fitguide/41e5e14d-88fe-45e7-ba3a-be5a2cbde2cd/scratchpad/mig_test.db '.schema users')",
-      "Bash(docker build *)"
+      "Bash(docker build *)",
+      "Bash(git status *)"
     ]
   }
 }
diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
index 74e8061..ce0dbe5 100644
--- a/.gitignore
+++ b/.gitignore
@@ -10,6 +10,8 @@ venv/
 
 # Databases
 *.db
+*.db-shm
+*.db-wal
 *.sqlite3
 
 # Test / tooling
diff --git a/app/core/database.py b/app/core/database.py
index 8ef0b6a..95397fd 100644
--- a/app/core/database.py
+++ b/app/core/database.py
@@ -5,6 +5,7 @@ Works with SQLite (aiosqlite) or Postgres (asyncpg) depending on DATABASE_URL.
 
 from collections.abc import AsyncGenerator
 
+from sqlalchemy import event
 from sqlalchemy.ext.asyncio import (
     AsyncSession,
     async_sessionmaker,
@@ -21,6 +22,19 @@ class Base(DeclarativeBase):
 
 engine = create_async_engine(settings.database_url, echo=settings.debug, future=True)
 
+if engine.sync_engine.dialect.name == "sqlite":
+
+    @event.listens_for(engine.sync_engine, "connect")
+    def _set_sqlite_pragma(dbapi_connection, connection_record) -> None:
+        """WAL mode lets readers/writers avoid blocking each other; busy_timeout
+        makes a connection wait for a lock instead of immediately raising
+        "database is locked" (the pysqlite/aiosqlite default is 0ms).
+        """
+        cursor = dbapi_connection.cursor()
+        cursor.execute("PRAGMA journal_mode=WAL")
+        cursor.execute("PRAGMA busy_timeout=5000")
+        cursor.close()
+
 AsyncSessionLocal = async_sessionmaker(
     engine,
     class_=AsyncSession,