diff --git a/.github/workflows/server-tests.yml b/.github/workflows/server-tests.yml
index 3e53191274..02e7576912 100644
--- a/.github/workflows/server-tests.yml
+++ b/.github/workflows/server-tests.yml
@@ -46,6 +46,9 @@ jobs:
     timeout-minutes: 30
     env:
       NODE_ENV: "production"
+      PYTHONOPTIMIZE: 2
+      # noisy 3rd party library warnings
+      PYTHONWARNINGS: "module,ignore:::babel.messages.extract"
 
     strategy:
       fail-fast: false
diff --git a/frappe/parallel_test_runner.py b/frappe/parallel_test_runner.py
index c6292de69e..13defac5e0 100644
--- a/frappe/parallel_test_runner.py
+++ b/frappe/parallel_test_runner.py
@@ -32,8 +32,6 @@ class ParallelTestRunner:
 		self.total_tests = 0
 		self.test_result = None
 		self.setup_test_file_list()
-		warnings.simplefilter("module", DeprecationWarning)
-		warnings.simplefilter("module", PendingDeprecationWarning)
 
 	def setup_and_run(self):
 		self.setup_test_site()
diff --git a/frappe/recorder.py b/frappe/recorder.py
index 208f436eb4..cc4bca536b 100644
--- a/frappe/recorder.py
+++ b/frappe/recorder.py
@@ -175,15 +175,13 @@ def normalize_query(query: str) -> str:
 
 
 def record(force=False):
-	if __debug__:
-		if frappe.cache.get_value(RECORDER_INTERCEPT_FLAG) or force:
-			frappe.local._recorder = Recorder(force=force)
+	if frappe.cache.get_value(RECORDER_INTERCEPT_FLAG) or force:
+		frappe.local._recorder = Recorder(force=force)
 
 
 def dump():
-	if __debug__:
-		if hasattr(frappe.local, "_recorder"):
-			frappe.local._recorder.dump()
+	if hasattr(frappe.local, "_recorder"):
+		frappe.local._recorder.dump()
 
 
 class Recorder:
diff --git a/frappe/utils/pdf.py b/frappe/utils/pdf.py
index 16780e3dbc..5c44a672a0 100644
--- a/frappe/utils/pdf.py
+++ b/frappe/utils/pdf.py
@@ -10,6 +10,8 @@ from urllib.parse import parse_qs, urlparse
 
 import cssutils
 import pdfkit
+
+pdfkit.source.unicode = str  # NOTE: upstream bug; PYTHONOPTIMIZE=1 optimized this away
 from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
 from packaging.version import Version
 from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter