diff --git a/spec/rails_helper.rb b/spec/rails_helper.rb
index c93a2b0c..0a289ff2 100644
--- a/spec/rails_helper.rb
+++ b/spec/rails_helper.rb
@@ -132,6 +132,14 @@ def executor_around_each_request
   # arbitrary gems may also be filtered via:
   # config.filter_gems_from_backtrace("gem name")
 
+  # Rails 8.1 loads routes lazily. Devise registers its mappings while the
+  # routes are drawn (via devise_for), so until the routes are loaded
+  # Devise.mappings is empty and sign_in raises "Could not find a valid
+  # mapping". Force the routes to load before the suite runs.
+  config.before(:suite) do
+    Rails.application.reload_routes_unless_loaded
+  end
+
   config.before(:suite) do
     DatabaseCleaner.clean_with(:truncation)
   end
diff --git a/spec/requests/madmin/projects_spec.rb b/spec/requests/madmin/projects_spec.rb
index 23b9e782..391f8dcd 100644
--- a/spec/requests/madmin/projects_spec.rb
+++ b/spec/requests/madmin/projects_spec.rb
@@ -13,7 +13,10 @@
       get "/madmin/projects"
 
       expect(response).to have_http_status(:ok)
-      expect(response.body).to include(project.title)
+      # The title is HTML-escaped in the rendered page (e.g. an apostrophe
+      # becomes '), so compare against the escaped form to avoid a flaky
+      # failure whenever Faker generates a name with special characters.
+      expect(response.body).to include(CGI.escapeHTML(project.title))
     end
   end