diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index 18e4bc7..2259dd2 100644
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -43,6 +43,16 @@ requires = [
     #
     # package                           # low                   high
 
+    # TODO: Pyramid 1.9 looks like it breaks us..? playing it safe for now..
+    'pyramid<1.9',                      # 1.3b2                 1.8.3
+
+    # apparently 2.0 removes the retry support, in which case we then need
+    # pyramid_retry .. but that requires pyramid 1.9 ...
+    'pyramid_tm<2.0',                   # 0.3                   1.1.1
+
+    # TODO: why do we need to cap this?  breaks tailbone.db zope stuff somehow
+    'zope.sqlalchemy<1.0',              # 0.7                   0.7.7
+
     'invoke',                           # 0.22.1
     'psycopg2',                         # 2.6.2
     'rattail-corepos',                  # 0.1.0