diff --git a/src/signal/daemon.test.ts b/src/signal/daemon.test.ts
index 4940fc8b7..134605f10 100644
--- a/src/signal/daemon.test.ts
+++ b/src/signal/daemon.test.ts
@@ -16,6 +16,15 @@ describe("classifySignalCliLogLine", () => {
     expect(classifySignalCliLogLine("ERROR Something")).toBe("error");
   });
 
+  it("treats failures without explicit severity as error", () => {
+    expect(
+      classifySignalCliLogLine("Failed to initialize HTTP Server - oops"),
+    ).toBe("error");
+    expect(classifySignalCliLogLine('Exception in thread "main"')).toBe(
+      "error",
+    );
+  });
+
   it("returns null for empty lines", () => {
     expect(classifySignalCliLogLine("")).toBe(null);
     expect(classifySignalCliLogLine("   ")).toBe(null);
diff --git a/src/signal/daemon.ts b/src/signal/daemon.ts
index 0bd382f9c..ca1b01b60 100644
--- a/src/signal/daemon.ts
+++ b/src/signal/daemon.ts
@@ -23,6 +23,8 @@ export function classifySignalCliLogLine(line: string): "log" | "error" | null {
   if (!trimmed) return null;
   // signal-cli commonly writes all logs to stderr; treat severity explicitly.
   if (/\b(ERROR|WARN|WARNING)\b/.test(trimmed)) return "error";
+  // Some signal-cli failures are not tagged with WARN/ERROR but should still be surfaced loudly.
+  if (/\b(FAILED|SEVERE|EXCEPTION)\b/i.test(trimmed)) return "error";
   return "log";
 }