diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index 85e90b5..ee894c3 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ build-backend = "setuptools.build_meta"
 
 [project]
 name = "ingestor"
-version = "2.0.0-rc1"
+version = "2.0.0-rc2"
 description = "Sientia DataOps Ingestor - OPC Tag Ingestor"
 readme = "README.md"
 requires-python = ">=3.11"
diff --git a/requirements-dev.txt b/requirements-dev.txt
index 42c84fe..09381f5 100644
--- a/requirements-dev.txt
+++ b/requirements-dev.txt
@@ -16,4 +16,10 @@ pytest-asyncio>=0.21.0   # Async test support (already in main requirements)
 
 # Development Tools
 ipython>=8.12.0          # Enhanced Python shell
-ipdb>=0.13.13            # IPython debuggerpython-dotenv>=1.0    # local dev only: app/seed read .env if present (in-cluster env comes from Helm)
+ipdb>=0.13.13            # IPython debugger
+python-dotenv>=1.0    # local dev only: app/seed read .env if present (in-cluster env comes from Helm)
+
+# gRPC code generation (regenerate ingestor/proto/*_pb2*.py) — not needed
+# at runtime: the generated stubs are committed. Kept out of requirements.txt
+# because workers install only from the cluster package index.
+grpcio-tools>=1.60
diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
index 36ddd06..b6d8b89 100644
--- a/requirements.txt
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -8,4 +8,6 @@ prometheus_client
 pymongo
 nats-py>=2.6
 grpcio>=1.60
-grpcio-tools>=1.60
\ No newline at end of file
+# Runtime of the committed gRPC stubs: ingestor/proto/opc_gateway_pb2.py was
+# generated with protobuf 7.35.0 and validates the runtime version on import.
+protobuf>=7.35