diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index ad78d53..2576c3c 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -32,6 +32,7 @@ classifiers = [
 license = {text = "GNU General Public License v3+"}
 requires-python = ">= 3.8"
 dependencies = [
+        "SQLAlchemy<2",         # TODO: should allow 2.x
         "WuttaWeb>=0.22.0",
 ]