diff --git a/.github/workflows/ci.yml b/.github/workflows/ci.yml
index 689ac98..546caed 100644
--- a/.github/workflows/ci.yml
+++ b/.github/workflows/ci.yml
@@ -51,11 +51,13 @@ jobs:
           fetch-depth: 0  # get all tags, lets setuptools_scm do its thing
 
       # install ActivitySim, overriding the one in the workspace,
-      # as the pre-installed one is the latest release but not the most up-to-date
+      # as the pre-installed one is not necessarily the most up-to-date
       - name: Install ActivitySim
         run: |
           uv pip install --no-deps ./cloned/activitysim
 
+      # The next step is to run the tests, but now we need "--no-sync" to avoid
+      # automatically reinstalling the overwritten version of ActivitySim
       - name: Test this implementation
         run: |
-          uv run pytest ./test
+          uv run --no-sync pytest ./test
diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index 98c353c..87e177e 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -10,7 +10,7 @@ dependencies = [
     "numba>=0.57",
     "numpy>=1.16.1,<1.26",
     "openmatrix>=0.3.5.0",
-    "pandas>=2.1.0",
+    "pandas>=2.1.0,<3",
     "pandera>=0.15,<0.18.1",
     "psutil>=4.1",
     "pydantic>=2.6",
diff --git a/test/reference-pipeline-extended-recodeFalse.zip b/test/reference-pipeline-extended-recodeFalse.zip
index 99f94f1..4c6945c 100644
Binary files a/test/reference-pipeline-extended-recodeFalse.zip and b/test/reference-pipeline-extended-recodeFalse.zip differ
diff --git a/test/reference-pipeline-extended-recodeTrue.zip b/test/reference-pipeline-extended-recodeTrue.zip
index 4c7798e..64c0cb5 100644
Binary files a/test/reference-pipeline-extended-recodeTrue.zip and b/test/reference-pipeline-extended-recodeTrue.zip differ
diff --git a/uv.lock b/uv.lock
index 4ec1d38..433951f 100644
--- a/uv.lock
+++ b/uv.lock
@@ -71,7 +71,7 @@ requires-dist = [
     { name = "numba", specifier = ">=0.57" },
     { name = "numpy", specifier = ">=1.16.1,<1.26" },
     { name = "openmatrix", specifier = ">=0.3.5.0" },
-    { name = "pandas", specifier = ">=2.1.0" },
+    { name = "pandas", specifier = ">=2.1.0,<3" },
     { name = "pandera", specifier = ">=0.15,<0.18.1" },
     { name = "psutil", specifier = ">=4.1" },
     { name = "pydantic", specifier = ">=2.6" },