diff --git a/__tests__/context-ranking.test.ts b/__tests__/context-ranking.test.ts
index ec9772086..5e2e63a32 100644
--- a/__tests__/context-ranking.test.ts
+++ b/__tests__/context-ranking.test.ts
@@ -16,7 +16,7 @@ import * as path from 'path';
 import * as os from 'os';
 import CodeGraph from '../src/index';
 import { LOW_CONFIDENCE_MARKER } from '../src/context';
-import { isDistinctiveIdentifier, scorePathRelevance, deriveProjectNameTokens } from '../src/search/query-utils';
+import { isDistinctiveIdentifier, nameMatchBonus, scorePathRelevance, deriveProjectNameTokens } from '../src/search/query-utils';
 
 describe('isDistinctiveIdentifier', () => {
   it('treats plain dictionary words as non-distinctive', () => {
@@ -39,6 +39,13 @@ describe('isDistinctiveIdentifier', () => {
   });
 });
 
+describe('nameMatchBonus', () => {
+  it('does not award a name match bonus for empty or whitespace-only queries', () => {
+    expect(nameMatchBonus('Anything', '')).toBe(0);
+    expect(nameMatchBonus('Anything', '   \n\t  ')).toBe(0);
+  });
+});
+
 // A single PascalCase query word (notably a project name a user naturally
 // includes) splits into sub-tokens that all match the SAME path segment; summed
 // per sub-token it boosted that path 4×, burying the rest of the query's stack
diff --git a/src/search/query-utils.ts b/src/search/query-utils.ts
index 1a7b121fc..74d4afff2 100644
--- a/src/search/query-utils.ts
+++ b/src/search/query-utils.ts
@@ -343,6 +343,8 @@ function matchesNonProductionDir(lowerPath: string): boolean {
 export function nameMatchBonus(nodeName: string, query: string): number {
   const nameLower = nodeName.toLowerCase();
 
+  if (query.trim().length === 0) return 0;
+
   // Split query into word-level terms (handles "CacheBuilder build" → ["cache","builder","build"])
   const rawTerms = query
     .replace(/([a-z])([A-Z])/g, '$1 $2')