diff --git a/tests/test_plugins/test_endpoints_settings_declared.py b/tests/test_plugins/test_endpoints_settings_declared.py
index 8bf73036..d8e4d905 100644
--- a/tests/test_plugins/test_endpoints_settings_declared.py
+++ b/tests/test_plugins/test_endpoints_settings_declared.py
@@ -74,13 +74,30 @@ def test_the_declared_defaults_match_what_the_code_reads_with_no_row(db):
 def test_the_upgrade_pass_seeds_them_on_a_site_that_installed_earlier(app, db):
     """install/enable fire only on a state transition, so a fleet already
     running this plugin gets these rows from `flask plugin upgrade-all`, which
-    calls sync_all_plugin_settings."""
-    pm = app.extensions.get('plugin_manager')
-    if pm is None:
-        pytest.skip('no plugin manager in this build')
+    calls sync_all_plugin_settings -> _seed_plugin_settings.
+
+    This drives _seed_plugin_settings on a manager built for this test rather
+    than the process-wide plugin_manager singleton, and that is deliberate.
+    create_app() re-points that singleton, eight test modules build their own
+    app, and whatever ran last on this xdist worker owns it: the symptoms are
+    "no such table: settings" (seeding against another app's in-memory SQLite)
+    and "'NoneType' object has no attribute 'get_all'" (registry left None).
+    Both land on whichever test follows, so they move with the split - this one
+    passed locally and failed on CI for exactly that reason.
+
+    init_app is not called here either: it re-registers the plugin blueprints,
+    and twice on one app raises "The name 'backups' is already registered".
+    Setting _app and _db is all the seeding routine reads.
+    """
+    from shopdb.plugins import PluginManager
+    from plugins.endpoints.plugin import EndpointsPlugin
+
     assert Setting.query.filter_by(key=QUERY_KEY).first() is None
 
-    pm.sync_all_plugin_settings()
+    manager = PluginManager()
+    manager._app = app
+    manager._db = db
+    assert manager._seed_plugin_settings(EndpointsPlugin()) is True
 
     for key, value in ((REVOKED_KEY, False), (QUERY_KEY, True)):
         row = Setting.query.filter_by(key=key).one()