diff --git a/internal/index/hybrid.go b/internal/index/hybrid.go
index 8280fa2..88ff4cd 100644
--- a/internal/index/hybrid.go
+++ b/internal/index/hybrid.go
@@ -3,6 +3,7 @@ package index
 import (
 	"fmt"
 	"strings"
+	"unicode"
 
 	"github.com/Coder8124/logos/internal/memory"
 	"github.com/Coder8124/logos/internal/provider"
@@ -116,11 +117,15 @@ func (ix *Index) memoryHits(p *provider.Provider, model, query string, k int) []
 // The tokenizer indexed WG-4471 as wg then 4471, so gluing the query into
 // "WG4471" matched nothing; the phrase "WG 4471" matches the identifier as a
 // unit, and not a note that only has wg and 4471 apart.
+//
+// A letter is any letter, not just ASCII: unicode61 indexes café and naïve as
+// whole words, and an ASCII-only split turned the query into "caf" and "na ve",
+// which never matched them — and did match a note with those fragments.
 func ftsQuery(q string) string {
 	var tokens []string
 	for _, f := range strings.Fields(q) {
 		pieces := strings.FieldsFunc(f, func(r rune) bool {
-			return !(r >= 'a' && r <= 'z' || r >= 'A' && r <= 'Z' || r >= '0' && r <= '9')
+			return !(unicode.IsLetter(r) || unicode.IsDigit(r))
 		})
 		if len(strings.Join(pieces, "")) > 1 {
 			tokens = append(tokens, `"`+strings.Join(pieces, " ")+`"`)
diff --git a/internal/index/hybrid_test.go b/internal/index/hybrid_test.go
index b70448f..2e465f0 100644
--- a/internal/index/hybrid_test.go
+++ b/internal/index/hybrid_test.go
@@ -61,6 +61,25 @@ func TestLexicalFindsExactToken(t *testing.T) {
 	}
 }
 
+func TestAWordWithANonASCIILetterIsFoundAsWritten(t *testing.T) {
+	ix := newTestIndex(t)
+	seed(t, ix, "ideas/naive", "Naïve Bayes", "a naïve baseline before the café survey")
+	seed(t, ix, "trips/greece", "Trip", "two weeks in Ελλάδα")
+	// The ASCII remnants of each word, so a query that drops the accented
+	// letter matches this note instead and the failure is a wrong answer.
+	seed(t, ix, "ideas/other", "Other", "na ve caf")
+
+	for q, want := range map[string]string{"naïve": "ideas/naive", "café": "ideas/naive", "Ελλάδα": "trips/greece"} {
+		got, err := ix.lexical(q, 5)
+		if err != nil {
+			t.Fatal(err)
+		}
+		if len(got) == 0 || got[0] != want {
+			t.Errorf("searching %q should surface %s first, got %v", q, want, got)
+		}
+	}
+}
+
 func TestFtsQueryStripsPunctuation(t *testing.T) {
 	// A query full of FTS syntax characters must not error — it should reduce to
 	// a safe OR of the real tokens.
diff --git a/internal/textmatch/textmatch.go b/internal/textmatch/textmatch.go
index 623bc6e..f299e82 100644
--- a/internal/textmatch/textmatch.go
+++ b/internal/textmatch/textmatch.go
@@ -76,10 +76,12 @@ func numeric(s string) bool {
 
 // Akin reports whether two words are the same term in different clothes.
 //
-// A shared prefix of five characters catches the inflections that matter —
-// manufactures/manufacturer, proposal/proposals, quote/quoted — without pulling
-// in a stemmer. Exact matching missed all of them, and a question asked in the
-// user's words rarely uses the same inflection as the note that answers it.
+// One word being a prefix of the other, at least five characters long, catches
+// the inflections that add a suffix — proposal/proposals, quote/quoted,
+// manufacture/manufacturer — without pulling in a stemmer. Exact matching
+// missed all of them, and a question asked in the user's words rarely uses the
+// same inflection as the note that answers it. Two words that both change the
+// ending, manufactures/manufacturer, are not akin.
 func Akin(a, b string) bool {
 	if a == b {
 		return true
diff --git a/internal/textmatch/textmatch_test.go b/internal/textmatch/textmatch_test.go
index a6d0e0c..1e3b5c8 100644
--- a/internal/textmatch/textmatch_test.go
+++ b/internal/textmatch/textmatch_test.go
@@ -31,6 +31,10 @@ func TestAkinMatchesInflectionsButNotShortWords(t *testing.T) {
 	if Akin("cart", "carton") {
 		t.Error(`Akin("cart", "carton") = true, want false`)
 	}
+	// The comment once promised this pair; the prefix rule never matched it.
+	if Akin("manufactures", "manufacturer") {
+		t.Error(`Akin("manufactures", "manufacturer") = true, want false — update the comment if this changes`)
+	}
 }
 
 // Jaccard scored this pair at 0.29, so a superseded price was handed over as