diff --git a/AGENTS.md b/AGENTS.md
index 804a722..853a8d7 100644
--- a/AGENTS.md
+++ b/AGENTS.md
@@ -138,9 +138,10 @@ live Atlassian APIs; property-generated ADF trees; the CommonMark spec suite aga
 - Nothing recurses unbounded: the guards walk iteratively, and blocks, marks and JSON values — an
   attribute's and a carried node's alike — are all held to 500 levels, so a deep document is a
   `Result` rather than the stack overflow that waits near 2000.
-- A reader takes the text and an index — a sticky regex, `indexOf` — never a fresh slice per
-  character, and a per-character walk hoists what does not vary with the character. The pipeline
-  persona feeds documents nobody typed, so an ordinary megabyte stays milliseconds.
+- A reader takes the text and an index — a sticky regex whose `lastIndex` the caller sets on the
+  line before it reads, `indexOf` — never a fresh slice per character, and a per-character walk
+  hoists the scan that does not vary with the character. The pipeline persona feeds documents
+  nobody typed, and a megabyte through a quadratic walk is a minute rather than a millisecond.
 - No casts: `as`, `as unknown as`, non-null `!`. A boundary owes a type guard validating the
   fields it claims (`isAdfDocument`); past it everything is typed. Make invalid states
   unrepresentable.
@@ -180,7 +181,7 @@ One-line commit messages and PR titles; short PR summaries. No AI-attribution ma
 No wiki markup (§1), no network or filesystem I/O, no name→id resolution (§3), no ADF schema
 validation or exported validator — a refusal that keeps the round-trip is not schema validation,
 so the one a spelled node carrying the same mark type twice earns stays, no shipped CSS (§4), no
-streaming APIs, no performance budget past §11's linear scan — nothing here is tuned, and no
+streaming APIs, no performance budget past §11's scanning rule — nothing here is tuned, and no
 figure is promised. A CLI is a later goal (`todo.md`), not a non-goal.
 
 ## 15. The working loop
diff --git a/src/markdown/emit/line-escaping.ts b/src/markdown/emit/line-escaping.ts
index 3249a5d..000ef5a 100644
--- a/src/markdown/emit/line-escaping.ts
+++ b/src/markdown/emit/line-escaping.ts
@@ -69,6 +69,7 @@ function escape(segments: readonly InlineSegment[], container: LineContainer): A
   const escaped = new Set<number>()
   const placements: number[] = []
   let output = ''
+  const linkClose = lastLinkClose(scan, escapings)
   let line = scanLine(scan, 0)
   for (let index = 0; index < scan.length; index += 1) {
     if (index > line.start + line.text.length) line = scanLine(scan, line.start + line.text.length + 1)
@@ -78,7 +79,7 @@ function escape(segments: readonly InlineSegment[], container: LineContainer): A
       escapable &&
       (claimsLineStart(line, index, container) ||
         mergesWithSyntax(scan, escapings, index) ||
-        opensConstruct(scan, escapings, index, escaping === 'bracketed', container, escaped))
+        opensConstruct(scan, linkClose, index, escaping === 'bracketed', container, escaped))
     ) {
       output += '\\'
       escaped.add(index)
@@ -185,14 +186,14 @@ function isSyntax(escaping: InlineEscaping | undefined): boolean {
 
 function opensConstruct(
   scan: string,
-  escapings: readonly (InlineEscaping | undefined)[],
+  linkClose: number,
   index: number,
   inBrackets: boolean,
   container: LineContainer,
   escaped: ReadonlySet<number>,
 ): boolean {
   if (container === 'heading' && closesHeading(scan, index)) return true
-  return claimsCharacter(scan, escapings, index, inBrackets, container, escaped)
+  return claimsCharacter(scan, linkClose, index, inBrackets, container, escaped)
 }
 
 function claimsLineStart(line: ScanLine, index: number, container: LineContainer): boolean {
@@ -211,7 +212,7 @@ function closesHeading(scan: string, index: number): boolean {
 
 function claimsCharacter(
   scan: string,
-  escapings: readonly (InlineEscaping | undefined)[],
+  linkClose: number,
   index: number,
   inBrackets: boolean,
   container: LineContainer,
@@ -224,19 +225,20 @@ function claimsCharacter(
   if (character === '&') return readEntityReference(scan, index) !== undefined
   if (character === '<') return opensBracketedAutolink(scan, index) || opensEmailAutolink(scan, index) || inlineHtmlConstruct(scan, index) !== undefined
   if (character === ':') return opensInlineDirective(scan, index)
-  if (character === '[') return opensLink(scan, escapings, index)
+  if (character === '[') return index < linkClose
   if (character === '`') return opensCodeSpan(scan, index, escaped)
   if (character === '*' || character === '_' || character === '~') return claimsEmphasis(scan, index, escaped)
   return false
 }
 
+// The last `]` link text could close on, so a `[` ahead of it opens one and a `[` past it cannot.
 // A `]` the emitter spelled sits inside a construct that binds before link text does.
-function opensLink(scan: string, escapings: readonly (InlineEscaping | undefined)[], index: number): boolean {
-  for (let cursor = index + 1; cursor < scan.length; cursor += 1) {
+function lastLinkClose(scan: string, escapings: readonly (InlineEscaping | undefined)[]): number {
+  for (let cursor = scan.length - 1; cursor >= 0; cursor -= 1) {
     if (scan.charAt(cursor) !== ']' || isSyntax(escapings[cursor])) continue
-    if (followsLinkText.test(scan.charAt(cursor + 1))) return true
+    if (followsLinkText.test(scan.charAt(cursor + 1))) return cursor
   }
-  return false
+  return -1
 }
 
 function opensCodeSpan(scan: string, index: number, escaped: ReadonlySet<number>): boolean {
diff --git a/src/markdown/entity-references.test.ts b/src/markdown/entity-references.test.ts
index deb9d4a..43507bf 100644
--- a/src/markdown/entity-references.test.ts
+++ b/src/markdown/entity-references.test.ts
@@ -4,14 +4,18 @@ import { dirname, join } from 'node:path'
 import { fileURLToPath } from 'node:url'
 import { readFileSync } from 'node:fs'
 
+import { readEntityReference } from './entity-references.ts'
+
 const source = readFileSync(join(dirname(fileURLToPath(import.meta.url)), 'entity-references.ts'), 'utf8')
 
-// The packing the module rests on, read off the rows rather than trusted: a value holding a space or a
-// tilde mis-splits into a wrong name and a lost one, at load, with nothing failing.
-test('every packed reference parts into one name and one value', () => {
+// A value holding a space or a tilde mis-splits into a wrong name and a lost one, silently, at load.
+test('every packed reference parts into one name and one value the table decodes', () => {
   const packed = /const packedReferences =\n {2}'([\s\S]*?)'\n/.exec(source)?.[1]
   assert.ok(packed !== undefined)
   const references = packed.split(/(?:\\\n)? +/)
   assert.equal(references.length, 2125)
-  for (const reference of references) assert.match(reference, /^[A-Za-z][A-Za-z0-9]*~[^ ~]+$/)
+  for (const reference of references) {
+    assert.match(reference, /^[A-Za-z][A-Za-z0-9]*~[^ ~]+$/)
+    assert.ok(readEntityReference(`&${reference.slice(0, reference.indexOf('~'))};`, 0) !== undefined)
+  }
 })