diff --git a/static/index.html b/static/index.html
index 3edccf1..16a0952 100644
--- a/static/index.html
+++ b/static/index.html
@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
 <title>ani-web</title>
 <link rel="icon" href="data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' viewBox='0 0 64 64'%3E%3Crect width='64' height='64' rx='14' fill='%23f97316'/%3E%3Ctext x='32' y='45' font-family='sans-serif' font-size='42' font-weight='700' text-anchor='middle' fill='%230e0f13'%3Ea%3C/text%3E%3C/svg%3E">
 
-<link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css">
+<link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css?v=2">
 </head>
 <body>
 <header>
@@ -26,7 +26,10 @@
 </header>
 <main id="main"><p class="muted">Search for an anime to get started.</p></main>
 <div id="toasts" aria-live="polite"></div>
+<!-- ponytail: bump ?v= whenever app.js/style.css change — they are cached
+     max-age=300 in browser AND possibly in your HTTPS proxy, and a stale
+     copy is exactly how users keep seeing an old UI after a deploy -->
 <script src="hls.min.js"></script>
-<script src="app.js"></script>
+<script src="app.js?v=2"></script>
 </body>
 </html>