diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 4ea1fe3..0bd5880 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -7,6 +7,10 @@ and this project adheres to [Semantic Versioning](https://semver.org/spec/v2.0.0
 
 ## [2.0.0] - Unreleased
 
+### Fixed
+
+- `Logging` is now declared in the test target. `test/test_worker_lifecycle.jl` does `using Logging`, so `Pkg.test()` always ended in `ArgumentError: Package Logging not found in current path` — meaning the test item covering the slow-activation warning had never actually run.
+
 ### Added
 
 - A test item timeout is now logged with the evidence for *which* channel failed: how long it has been since the test process last sent a JSON-RPC message, how long since it last produced output, whether the process's own hang watchdog left a diagnostics dump, and — on a JSONRPC that can report it — how far behind the connection's outbound queue is. A test process talks to the controller over two independent channels, and a timeout only ever proves that the *result* never arrived. Output still arriving while the socket has gone quiet means the connection died, not the test; before this the two were indistinguishable without reconstructing the run from its artifacts afterwards.
diff --git a/Project.toml b/Project.toml
index 88a843f..a40e229 100644
--- a/Project.toml
+++ b/Project.toml
@@ -16,10 +16,11 @@ Pkg = "44cfe95a-1eb2-52ea-b672-e2afdf69b78f"
 TestItemRunner = "f8b46487-2199-4994-9208-9a1283c18c0a"
 Test = "8dfed614-e22c-5e08-85e1-65c5234f0b40"
 JuliaWorkspaces = "e554591c-7f10-434f-9f27-2097f62a04fd"
+Logging = "56ddb016-857b-54e1-b83d-db4d58db5568"
 
 [compat]
 julia = "1.12"
 PrecompileTools = "1.3.4"
 
 [targets]
-test = ["JuliaWorkspaces", "Test", "TestItemRunner", "Pkg"]
+test = ["JuliaWorkspaces", "Test", "TestItemRunner", "Pkg", "Logging"]
diff --git a/src/testitemcontroller.jl b/src/testitemcontroller.jl
index 8a3c82f..a538729 100644
--- a/src/testitemcontroller.jl
+++ b/src/testitemcontroller.jl
@@ -1530,8 +1530,9 @@ end
 
 # The outbound half of a process's JSON-RPC connection, when the JSONRPC in use can report
 # it. That queue is unbounded, so a peer that has stopped reading never makes a send fail —
-# the messages simply accumulate, undelivered. Guarded by `isdefined` because the compat
-# bound still allows a JSONRPC without the accessor.
+# the messages simply accumulate, undelivered. Guarded by `isdefined` rather than assumed:
+# JSONRPC is vendored here, not a dependency with a compat bound, so what decides whether the
+# accessor exists is when `packages/JSONRPC` was last re-vendored.
 function _outbound_backlog(ps::TestProcessState)
     ps.endpoint === nothing && return nothing
     isdefined(JSONRPC, :outbound_backlog) || return nothing