diff --git a/packages/tasks/tasks/src/index.ts b/packages/tasks/tasks/src/index.ts
index 17e617e8a7..e237aa0681 100644
--- a/packages/tasks/tasks/src/index.ts
+++ b/packages/tasks/tasks/src/index.ts
@@ -49,6 +49,13 @@ declare module 'cordis' {
  */
 export abstract class TaskService extends Service {
   constructor(ctx: Context) {
+    // `abstract` erases at runtime, and this package name used to be the
+    // mountable concrete registry — a stale composition row would otherwise
+    // register a ctx.tasks with no method implementations and fail far from
+    // the misconfiguration. Fail loud at load instead.
+    if (new.target === TaskService) {
+      throw new Error('@deepseek-ai/dsh-tasks is the abstract task registry seam; load an implementation such as @deepseek-ai/dsh-tasks-local instead')
+    }
     super(ctx, 'tasks')
   }
 
diff --git a/packages/tasks/tasks/tests/service.spec.ts b/packages/tasks/tasks/tests/service.spec.ts
index d8d582e410..82fc415f51 100644
--- a/packages/tasks/tasks/tests/service.spec.ts
+++ b/packages/tasks/tasks/tests/service.spec.ts
@@ -79,4 +79,10 @@ describe('TaskService seam', () => {
     class SecondTaskService extends StubTaskService {}
     await expect(ctx.plugin(SecondTaskService)).rejects.toThrow(/service "tasks" has been registered/)
   })
+
+  it('mounting the abstract seam directly fails loudly at load (stale-composition fence)', async () => {
+    const ctx = new Context()
+    await expect(ctx.plugin(TaskService as unknown as typeof StubTaskService))
+      .rejects.toThrow(/abstract task registry seam; load an implementation such as @deepseek-ai\/dsh-tasks-local/)
+  })
 })