diff --git a/.github/workflows/ci.yaml b/.github/workflows/ci.yaml
index 94db4b1..37f40a9 100644
--- a/.github/workflows/ci.yaml
+++ b/.github/workflows/ci.yaml
@@ -22,6 +22,19 @@ jobs:
       - name: Setup
         uses: eddelbuettel/github-actions/r-ci@master
 
+      # macos-latest moved to arm64 and r-ci's macOS bootstrap stopped
+      # leaving `remotes` behind. run.sh install_deps calls it directly,
+      # so the dependency step died before any package code was parsed --
+      # and with fail-fast on, it cancelled the Linux leg too, which is
+      # the leg that actually gates these packages.
+      #
+      # Guarded on absence: a no-op on Linux, and it deletes itself the
+      # day upstream ships the fix rather than pinning us to an old image.
+      - name: Bootstrap remotes
+        run: >-
+          Rscript -e 'if (!requireNamespace("remotes", quietly = TRUE))
+          install.packages("remotes", repos = "https://cloud.r-project.org")'
+
       - name: Dependencies
         run: ./run.sh install_deps