diff --git a/.agents/skills/freehire-search/cli/src/helpers.ts b/.agents/skills/freehire-search/cli/src/helpers.ts
index cf4e4e89..d658e3ad 100644
--- a/.agents/skills/freehire-search/cli/src/helpers.ts
+++ b/.agents/skills/freehire-search/cli/src/helpers.ts
@@ -145,11 +145,15 @@ export interface JobDetailResult extends JobResult {
   description: string | null
 }
 
-/** Reshape a freehire job into the contract search-result fields. */
+/**
+ * Reshape a freehire job into the contract search-result fields. The title comes
+ * from the source ATS as indexed, which can carry HTML entities and stray
+ * whitespace ("Intern - Fullstack & AI Innovation "), so it is decoded and trimmed.
+ */
 export function toResult(j: FreehireJob): JobResult {
   return {
     id: j.public_slug,
-    title: j.title || "(untitled)",
+    title: decodeHtmlEntities(j.title || "").trim() || "(untitled)",
     company: j.company || null,
     company_slug: j.company_slug || null,
     location: j.location || null,
diff --git a/.agents/skills/freehire-search/cli/tests/parsing.test.ts b/.agents/skills/freehire-search/cli/tests/parsing.test.ts
index d5f7179b..f4c6881a 100644
--- a/.agents/skills/freehire-search/cli/tests/parsing.test.ts
+++ b/.agents/skills/freehire-search/cli/tests/parsing.test.ts
@@ -49,6 +49,24 @@ describe("toResult — reshape into the portal-skill contract", () => {
     expect(r.date).toBeNull();
     expect(r.work_mode).toBeNull();
   });
+
+  test("decodes HTML entities and trims whitespace in the title", () => {
+    // Real title from the index (freehire slug intern-fullstack-amp-ai-innovation-noise-edaawqq2).
+    expect(toResult(job({ title: "Intern - Fullstack & AI Innovation " })).title).toBe(
+      "Intern - Fullstack & AI Innovation",
+    );
+    expect(toResult(job({ title: "R&D Engineer" })).title).toBe("R&D Engineer");
+    expect(toResult(job({ title: "SDE Intern - Frontend   " })).title).toBe("SDE Intern - Frontend");
+  });
+
+  test("a whitespace-only title still falls back to (untitled)", () => {
+    expect(toResult(job({ title: "   " })).title).toBe("(untitled)");
+    expect(toResult(job({ title: "" })).title).toBe("(untitled)");
+  });
+
+  test("detail inherits the cleaned title", () => {
+    expect(toDetail(job({ title: "Data & Analytics Intern" })).title).toBe("Data & Analytics Intern");
+  });
 });
 
 describe("toDetail — adds cleaned description + enrichment", () => {
diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index a32ccaf6..02d907cb 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -105,6 +105,19 @@ per-file diff commands.
 
 ### Fixed
 
+- **`freehire-search` titles no longer carry HTML entities or stray whitespace**
+  (`.agents/skills/freehire-search/cli/src/helpers.ts`) - titles are indexed as the source ATS
+  wrote them and `toResult` passed them through untouched, so `detail
+  intern-fullstack-amp-ai-innovation-noise-edaawqq2` printed `Intern - Fullstack & AI
+  Innovation ` (trailing space included), and the same title reached `search` output. In a
+  93-result `/scrape` batch (`--country IN --seniority intern`), 1 title carried `&` and 3
+  ended in whitespace. `/scrape` Step 4.75 reads undecoded entities in titles as a
+  half-working parser, so by that rule a single such posting marks a healthy portal
+  degraded. The title now goes through the CLI's existing `decodeHtmlEntities` (already used
+  for `detail` descriptions) and is trimmed; an empty or whitespace-only title still falls
+  back to `(untitled)`. Pinned by three new `parsing.test.ts` cases, which fail on the old
+  pass-through.
+
 - **`freehire-search detail` keeps the salary period, so a yearly figure no longer reads as
   monthly** (`.agents/skills/freehire-search/cli/src/helpers.ts`, `SKILL.md`) - `formatSalary`
   printed only the currency and amounts, although freehire's enrichment records the period: