So ... this is embarrassing but I found the error and it was on my side. For whatever reason creating an empty web application with composer generates Bootstrap.php which reads services.neon, but cloning our repo generates a Bootstrap.php where all config files have singular names, meaning service.neon . For some reason. In other words I was writing my configuration in a file which Bootstrap did NOT load. After renaming it properly, everything suddenly works as expected, what a surprise. Thanks for everybody's time, I'm going to silently rethink my life :)