diff --git a/mempalace/searcher.py b/mempalace/searcher.py
index c4a1d87..c2fcdb4 100644
--- a/mempalace/searcher.py
+++ b/mempalace/searcher.py
@@ -46,7 +46,14 @@ def _first_or_empty(results, key: str) -> list:
 
 
 def _tokenize(text: str) -> list:
-    """Lowercase + strip to alphanumeric tokens of length ≥ 2."""
+    """Lowercase + strip to alphanumeric tokens of length ≥ 2.
+
+    Tolerates ``None`` documents — Chroma can return ``None`` in the
+    ``documents`` field for drawers without text content, which would
+    otherwise raise ``AttributeError`` mid-rerank.
+    """
+    if not text:
+        return []
     return _TOKEN_RE.findall(text.lower())
 
 
diff --git a/tests/test_searcher.py b/tests/test_searcher.py
index 65191c3..6b85832 100644
--- a/tests/test_searcher.py
+++ b/tests/test_searcher.py
@@ -121,6 +121,44 @@ class TestSearchMemories:
         assert none_hit["room"] == "unknown"
 
 
+# ── BM25 internals: None / empty document safety ─────────────────────
+
+
+class TestBM25NoneSafety:
+    """Regression tests for the AttributeError observed in production when
+    Chroma returned ``None`` documents inside a hybrid-rerank pass.
+
+    Trace from the daemon log (2026-04-24 21:07:05):
+        File "mempalace/searcher.py", line 81, in _bm25_scores
+            tokenized = [_tokenize(d) for d in documents]
+        File "mempalace/searcher.py", line 52, in _tokenize
+            return _TOKEN_RE.findall(text.lower())
+        AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'lower'
+    """
+
+    def test_tokenize_handles_none(self):
+        from mempalace.searcher import _tokenize
+
+        assert _tokenize(None) == []
+
+    def test_tokenize_handles_empty_string(self):
+        from mempalace.searcher import _tokenize
+
+        assert _tokenize("") == []
+
+    def test_bm25_scores_does_not_crash_on_none_documents(self):
+        """A ``None`` mixed into the corpus must yield score 0.0 for that doc
+        and finite scores for the rest, not raise AttributeError."""
+        from mempalace.searcher import _bm25_scores
+
+        scores = _bm25_scores(
+            "postgres migration", ["postgres migration done", None, "kafka rebalance"]
+        )
+        assert len(scores) == 3
+        assert scores[1] == 0.0
+        assert scores[0] > 0.0
+
+
 # ── search() (CLI print function) ─────────────────────────────────────