diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 9a46b57..e417404 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -11,6 +11,8 @@ Hotfix. In 0.2.2, `import app_skellington` raised
  * Tested on Linux, CPython 3.8–3.14 (Gitea CI). Each version builds the wheel
    and sdist, installs them and smoke-tests the import.
  * Tooling: ruff replaces black/isort/flake8; uv with a committed lockfile.
+ * Removed the `[dev]` extra: `pip install app_skellington[dev]` no longer
+   installs dev tools. Contributors use `uv sync` (a PEP 735 dependency group).
  * Metadata: license classifier corrected to MIT-0; Python version classifiers
    added; "OS Independent" replaced by Linux (Windows and macOS untested).
  * README: the debug variable is `APPSKELLINGTON_DEBUG`.
diff --git a/scripts/verify_index_release.sh b/scripts/verify_index_release.sh
index a5b1479..5cc3ee1 100755
--- a/scripts/verify_index_release.sh
+++ b/scripts/verify_index_release.sh
@@ -12,17 +12,31 @@ index="${2:-https://test.pypi.org/simple/}"
 here="$(cd "$(dirname "$0")" && pwd)"
 pythons=(3.8 3.9 3.10 3.11 3.12 3.13 3.14)
 
+# The package must come from $index and nowhere else. Otherwise a local
+# build could pass for the published release. --no-config ignores
+# uv.toml/pyproject settings; these variables would still redirect, so refuse.
+for var in UV_INDEX UV_INDEX_URL UV_DEFAULT_INDEX UV_EXTRA_INDEX_URL \
+  UV_FIND_LINKS UV_INDEX_STRATEGY UV_NO_INDEX PIP_INDEX_URL \
+  PIP_EXTRA_INDEX_URL PIP_FIND_LINKS; do
+  if [ -n "${!var:-}" ]; then
+    echo "refusing: $var is set and could redirect the install away from $index" >&2
+    exit 2
+  fi
+done
+
 work="$(mktemp -d)"
 trap 'rm -rf "$work"' EXIT
 
 for py in "${pythons[@]}"; do
   venv="$work/$py"
-  uv venv -q --python "$py" "$venv"
-  uv pip install -q --python "$venv" --no-cache --no-deps \
-    --index-url "$index" "app_skellington==$version"
+  uv venv -q --no-config --python "$py" "$venv"
+  # Wheel only: an sdist fallback would fetch its build backend from $index
+  # (TestPyPI). Not quiet, so the log shows what was installed.
+  uv pip install --no-config --python "$venv" --no-cache --no-deps \
+    --only-binary :all: --index-url "$index" "app_skellington==$version"
   "$venv/bin/python" -c 'import importlib.metadata as m; print("\n".join(m.requires("app_skellington") or []))' \
     > "$work/requirements.txt"
-  uv pip install -q --python "$venv" -r "$work/requirements.txt"
+  uv pip install -q --no-config --python "$venv" -r "$work/requirements.txt"
   (cd / && "$venv/bin/python" "$here/smoke_import.py" "$version")
 done