diff --git a/.gitlab-ci.yml b/.gitlab-ci.yml
index 09666ca..472002e 100644
--- a/.gitlab-ci.yml
+++ b/.gitlab-ci.yml
@@ -192,8 +192,8 @@
     - end_section install_r_packages
 
     - start_section testing_html2pdf "Testing PDF export"
-    - ./ci/html2pdf https://google.com
-    - ls -l ./google.pdf
+    - ./ci/html2pdf ci/html2pdf-smoke.html /tmp/html2pdf-smoke.pdf
+    - qpdf --check /tmp/html2pdf-smoke.pdf
     - end_section testing_html2pdf
 
   script:
diff --git a/ci/html2pdf b/ci/html2pdf
index 864f372..6cdc7cb 100755
--- a/ci/html2pdf
+++ b/ci/html2pdf
@@ -40,7 +40,9 @@
 </style>' "$abs_in"
 
   cd "$work_dir"
-  doc=$(basename "$abs_in")
+  # pagedown accepts absolute local paths consistently across Chrome/container
+  # versions; a bare basename can be rejected as an invalid URL.
+  doc=$abs_in
 fi
 
 # --- Automatic hyphenation ---------------------------------------------------
diff --git a/ci/html2pdf-smoke.html b/ci/html2pdf-smoke.html
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..71056f7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/ci/html2pdf-smoke.html
@@ -0,0 +1,13 @@
+<!doctype html>
+<html lang="en">
+<head>
+  <meta charset="utf-8">
+  <title>HTML-to-PDF smoke test</title>
+</head>
+<body>
+  <main class="poster">
+    <h1>HTML-to-PDF smoke test</h1>
+    <p>This local document verifies PDF generation without external services.</p>
+  </main>
+</body>
+</html>