diff --git a/BACKLOG.md b/BACKLOG.md
index f0b5a75..73deec3 100644
--- a/BACKLOG.md
+++ b/BACKLOG.md
@@ -66,14 +66,6 @@ quantized int8 vectors + RRF beats their JSON BM25 index), on multi-machine repl
 (they have none), on enforcement, and on shipping a real MCP server. What follows are the
 five places their design is genuinely better and the idea transfers._
 
-- [ ] **Contextual-prefix indexed chunks, synthetic tier only** ([#193](https://github.com/CryptoJones/omind/issues/193)) — _enhancement (retrieval)_ —
-  they implement Anthropic's Contextual Retrieval pattern: each chunk gets a 1–2
-  sentence prefix situating it in its page, and the *prefixed* text is what gets
-  indexed and embedded. omind indexes raw heading-split chunks, so a mid-note chunk
-  competes on its own words alone. Take only their zero-egress synthetic tier
-  (`<title> — <summary>. Section: <heading path>.`), not the LLM-written tiers —
-  omind's embeddings stay local. Gate it behind `omind bench --quality` and keep it
-  only if recall moves.
 - [ ] **Journaled plan→apply→recover transactions for multi-note operations** ([#194](https://github.com/CryptoJones/omind/issues/194)) — _enhancement (durability)_ —
   omind has atomic per-file replace, an advisory write lock, and version
   preconditions, but no journal and no rollback, so an interrupted multi-note
@@ -129,6 +121,26 @@ _No open items._
 
 ## Not planned
 
+- [ ] **Contextual-prefix indexed chunks (Anthropic Contextual Retrieval)** ([#193](https://github.com/CryptoJones/omind/issues/193), closed not-planned) — _rejected on measurement_ —
+  built behind `OMI_CONTEXTUAL_CHUNKS` and evaluated on the live 784-note vault, both
+  ways, with the semantic leg on. **recall@1 60% → 60%, recall@5 60% → 60%, MRR 0.640 →
+  0.640**, for +31% index size (13,908 → 18,248 KiB) and +20% rebuild time. Of the five
+  labelled cases, three were already rank 1 in both; the two misses went 7→8 and 13→11.
+  Noise, not signal.
+
+  The reason is the part worth remembering: **the issue's premise did not hold for omind.**
+  It assumed a mid-note chunk "competes on its own words alone", which is true of
+  claude-obsidian but not here — `_ingest` has always embedded `title + heading + tags +
+  chunk.text`, and `chunks_fts` has always given BM25 separate title/heading/tags columns.
+  omind already had contextual retrieval without the name. The prefix's only genuine
+  addition is the note's `Summary`, which on descriptive titles is largely a restatement
+  of a signal already indexed. The upstream 35–49% figure is measured against a baseline
+  that indexes bare chunks; omind is not that baseline.
+
+  Caveat kept honest: the labelled set is only 5 cases, so each is worth 20pp and an
+  effect under ~15% could hide. A 25–40 case set is worth building for retrieval work in
+  general — and would be the thing that could reopen this.
+
 - [ ] **Long game: fine-tune a model on the accumulated violation corpus** ([#91](https://github.com/CryptoJones/omind/issues/91), closed not-planned) — _roadmap (Phase 4)_ — deferred: the blocker is data, not compute. The live `compliance.jsonl` corpus is ~91% relevance-noise, ~6% real denies, and 100% DENY (zero ALLOW), so training on it as-is yields an always-deny model. Revisit only after `export-corpus` is reworked to synthesize balanced ALLOW examples (from the deterministic `guard.decide()`) and split the relevance corpus from the action corpus. The mechanical guard remains the backstop.
 - [ ] **claude-obsidian's source capture, Canvas/Bases emitters, and methodology filing modes** — _rejected_ —
   evaluated during the 2026-08-02 comparison. Their `capture` (immutable content-addressed
diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 491ba15..b8ba1d6 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -10,6 +10,14 @@ and this project adheres to [Semantic Versioning](https://semver.org/spec/v2.0.0
 _The last of the 2026-08-01 review and 2026-08-02 comparison backlogs, released
 together rather than as another run of point versions._
 
+### Changed
+- The FTS5 `snippet()` call names its column through `_FTS_TEXT_COLUMN` instead
+  of a bare `3`. `snippet()` takes a column *number*, so inserting any column
+  before `text` silently re-points every excerpt at the wrong column rather than
+  erroring — which is exactly what happened while evaluating
+  [#193](https://github.com/CryptoJones/omind/issues/193) (declined; see
+  `BACKLOG.md`). The experiment was reverted; this guardrail is worth keeping.
+
 ### Fixed
 - **A `SCHEMA_VERSION` bump that adds a column no longer wedges an existing
   search index** ([#210](https://github.com/CryptoJones/omind/issues/210)).
diff --git a/src/omind/searchindex.py b/src/omind/searchindex.py
index 2088f11..1c840e5 100644
--- a/src/omind/searchindex.py
+++ b/src/omind/searchindex.py
@@ -81,6 +81,13 @@
 #: just should not outrank a comparable one that was actually verified. Much
 #: gentler than the superseded penalty — low confidence is not obsolescence.
 _LOW_CONFIDENCE_WEIGHT = 0.8
+#: 0-based position of `text` in ``chunks_fts`` — FTS5's snippet() takes a
+#: column NUMBER, not a name, so inserting any column before `text` silently
+#: re-points every excerpt at the wrong column instead of erroring. That is not
+#: hypothetical: the #193 experiment added a column ahead of it and excerpts
+#: started returning the note's title line. Keep in step with the CREATE VIRTUAL
+#: TABLE below.
+_FTS_TEXT_COLUMN = 3
 #: Only the fused head pays the extra local embedding pass.
 _RERANK_DEPTH = 20
 #: How many candidates each leg contributes before fusion.
@@ -1274,7 +1281,8 @@ def _excerpt(
             return _collapse(str(row["text"]), max_chars)
         if expr:
             snippet = db.execute(
-                "SELECT snippet(chunks_fts, 3, '', '', '…', 24) AS s FROM chunks_fts"
+                f"SELECT snippet(chunks_fts, {_FTS_TEXT_COLUMN}, '', '', '…', 24) AS s"
+                " FROM chunks_fts"
                 " WHERE rowid = ? AND chunks_fts MATCH ?",
                 (chunk_id, expr),
             ).fetchone()