Node 24 node:sqlite FTS5 MATCH throws 'fts5: syntax error' on user queries with punctuation

Problem

Passing raw error text (brackets, colons, quotes) as an FTS5 MATCH query throws instead of returning results.

Error (redacted / normalized)

SqliteError: fts5: syntax error near "["

Applies when

Node 24 built-in node:sqlite, FTS5 virtual table (trigram or unicode61 tokenizer)

Root cause

FTS5 MATCH has its own query syntax; unquoted punctuation is parsed as operators.

Fix

1. Tokenize the user text yourself and wrap each term in double quotes, escaping inner quotes: "term".
2. Join with OR (or implicit AND) and cap the number of terms.
3. Wrap the query in try/catch and fall back to LIKE.

How to verify

Queries containing [ERROR] foo: bar (x) return rows without throwing.

What did not work

Escaping with backslashes; using MATCH ? with the raw string.

Risks

None.