diff --git a/nginx.conf b/nginx.conf
index db46074..2ae06bd 100644
--- a/nginx.conf
+++ b/nginx.conf
@@ -37,12 +37,32 @@ server {
     root /usr/share/nginx/html/crdc-demo/;  # Adjust if base is different
     index index.html;
 
+    # Compress text assets and — most importantly — the duckdb-wasm engine,
+    # which is ~39MB uncompressed and ~8.8MB gzipped. Without this it ships
+    # uncompressed on every cold load. Dynamic gzip rather than gzip_static
+    # because the Vite build emits no pre-compressed .gz files.
+    gzip on;
+    gzip_vary on;
+    gzip_min_length 1024;
+    gzip_proxied any;
+    gzip_comp_level 6;
+    gzip_types
+        text/plain
+        text/css
+        application/javascript
+        text/javascript
+        application/json
+        image/svg+xml
+        application/wasm;
+
     location / {
         try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html;
     }
 
-    # Civilytics design tokens: immutable cache headers for static assets
-    location ~* \.(js|css|png|jpg|jpeg|gif|svg|woff2|ttf)$ {
+    # Civilytics design tokens: immutable cache headers for static assets.
+    # `wasm` belongs here too — the duckdb engine is content-hashed by Vite and
+    # is by far the largest asset in the build, so it must not be re-fetched.
+    location ~* \.(js|css|wasm|png|jpg|jpeg|gif|svg|woff2|ttf)$ {
         expires 1y;
         add_header Cache-Control "public, max-age=31536000, immutable";
         try_files $uri =404;