diff --git a/stargate-common/build.gradle.kts b/stargate-common/build.gradle.kts
index 8dea307..a945bd6 100644
--- a/stargate-common/build.gradle.kts
+++ b/stargate-common/build.gradle.kts
@@ -1,8 +1,10 @@
 dependencies {
+    // compileOnly, not implementation: these are only needed to compile SqlGateStorage here.
+    // Actually bundling them for runtime is the paper module's job (it redeclares them as
+    // implementation) - stargate-velocity/stargate-bungee depend on this module too but never
+    // touch storage, so leaking these as transitive implementation deps would bloat their
+    // shaded jars with an unused JDBC/HikariCP stack for no reason.
     compileOnly("com.zaxxer:HikariCP:5.1.0")
-    implementation("com.zaxxer:HikariCP:5.1.0")
     compileOnly("org.xerial:sqlite-jdbc:3.46.1.3")
-    implementation("org.xerial:sqlite-jdbc:3.46.1.3")
     compileOnly("com.mysql:mysql-connector-j:8.4.0")
-    implementation("com.mysql:mysql-connector-j:8.4.0")
 }