diff --git a/src/normalize.ts b/src/normalize.ts
index 0641df8..12e2214 100644
--- a/src/normalize.ts
+++ b/src/normalize.ts
@@ -2,6 +2,7 @@
 
 import anyAscii from 'any-ascii';
 import { MAX_INPUT_BYTES } from './defaults.js';
+import { PLACEHOLDER_SENTINEL_LEFT, PLACEHOLDER_SENTINEL_RIGHT } from './placeholder-escape.js';
 
 /** Adversarial-resistant input normalisation with offset map.
  * Steps in order: whitespace-PII collapse (gated by digit/@ post-check),
@@ -22,6 +23,12 @@ const ZERO_WIDTH_CHARS = new Set([
   '', // ZERO WIDTH NO-BREAK SPACE / BOM
   '⁠', // WORD JOINER
   '­', // SOFT HYPHEN
+  // Placeholder-escape PUA sentinels — strip before detection so the
+  // GLiNER tokenizer never sees them. Leaving them in causes spurious
+  // private_person spans on the sentinel bytes themselves, which then
+  // corrupt user-authored `{{...}}` templates after vault substitution.
+  PLACEHOLDER_SENTINEL_LEFT,
+  PLACEHOLDER_SENTINEL_RIGHT,
 ]);
 
 /** Same characters as the Python `_SPACED_PII_RE`. Word-anchored on
diff --git a/src/placeholder-escape.ts b/src/placeholder-escape.ts
index cd43ac5..9bd384d 100644
--- a/src/placeholder-escape.ts
+++ b/src/placeholder-escape.ts
@@ -7,7 +7,11 @@
  */
 
 export const PLACEHOLDER_OPEN = '{{';
-export const PLACEHOLDER_OPEN_ESCAPED = '';
+/** First char of the 2-char PUA sentinel pair (U+E000). */
+export const PLACEHOLDER_SENTINEL_LEFT = '\uE000';
+/** Second char of the 2-char PUA sentinel pair (U+E001). */
+export const PLACEHOLDER_SENTINEL_RIGHT = '\uE001';
+export const PLACEHOLDER_OPEN_ESCAPED = PLACEHOLDER_SENTINEL_LEFT + PLACEHOLDER_SENTINEL_RIGHT;
 
 export function escapePlaceholders(text: string): string {
   return text.split(PLACEHOLDER_OPEN).join(PLACEHOLDER_OPEN_ESCAPED);
diff --git a/test/normalize.test.ts b/test/normalize.test.ts
index 9e946c9..a2b9bc5 100644
--- a/test/normalize.test.ts
+++ b/test/normalize.test.ts
@@ -1,5 +1,6 @@
 import { describe, expect, it } from 'vitest';
 import { normalizeForDetection, remapSpan } from '../src/normalize.js';
+import { PLACEHOLDER_OPEN_ESCAPED, escapePlaceholders } from '../src/placeholder-escape.js';
 
 describe('normalizeForDetection', () => {
   it('passes through ASCII unchanged', () => {
@@ -13,6 +14,30 @@ describe('normalizeForDetection', () => {
     }
   });
 
+  it('strips placeholder-escape PUA sentinels (U+E000 / U+E001)', () => {
+    // The escape mechanism rewrites user-authored `{{` to a 2-char PUA
+    // pair before detection. Normalise must strip those bytes so the
+    // GLiNER tokenizer never tags them as PII — leaving them in produces
+    // spurious `private_person` spans on the sentinel itself, which
+    // corrupts the user's `{{...}}` template after vault substitution.
+    const escaped = escapePlaceholders('{{name}}');
+    const r = normalizeForDetection(escaped);
+    expect(r.normalized).toBe('name}}');
+    // A span over just `name` in normalised coords [0, 4) remaps to the
+    // word's location in escaped coords [2, 6) — sentinel positions are
+    // skipped, so vault substitution never touches them.
+    const [origStart, origEnd] = remapSpan(0, 4, r.normToOrig);
+    expect(origStart).toBe(2);
+    expect(origEnd).toBe(6);
+  });
+
+  it('does not pass-through inputs that contain the PUA sentinel', () => {
+    // Bare sentinel triggers the non-ASCII path; ensure it is stripped.
+    const text = `prefix${PLACEHOLDER_OPEN_ESCAPED}suffix`;
+    const r = normalizeForDetection(text);
+    expect(r.normalized).toBe('prefixsuffix');
+  });
+
   it('strips zero-width characters', () => {
     // ZWSP between `john` and `@`. Original length 18, normalised 17.
     const text = 'john​@example.com';
diff --git a/test/nullpii.test.ts b/test/nullpii.test.ts
index 15c75d2..e91252d 100644
--- a/test/nullpii.test.ts
+++ b/test/nullpii.test.ts
@@ -179,6 +179,25 @@ describe('NullPii e2e pipeline (mocked ONNX)', () => {
     await b.dispose();
   });
 
+  it('preserves user-authored {{...}} templates around a real PII hit', async () => {
+    // Regression: gateway report showed `{{short-kebab-case-slug}}` in a
+    // system prompt was corrupted to `{{PII_PRIVATE_PERSON_2_…}}short-kebab-case-slug}}`
+    // because the escape PUA sentinel was tagged as `private_person`.
+    // With sentinels stripped before detection, the template survives the
+    // round-trip and the real PII (email) is the only thing replaced.
+    const n = new NullPii({ modelDir: '/fake', backend: 'cpu' });
+    const text = 'name: {{short-kebab-case-slug}} — contact alice@acme.io';
+    const out = await n.sanitize(text);
+    // Exactly one span — the email — fires from the recognizer pack.
+    // The template syntax is untouched.
+    expect(out.spans.find((s) => s.label === 'private_email')?.text).toBe('alice@acme.io');
+    expect(out.sanitized).toContain('{{short-kebab-case-slug}}');
+    expect(out.sanitized).not.toContain('{{PII_PRIVATE_PERSON');
+    const restored = n.restore(out.sanitized, out.sessionId);
+    expect(restored.restored).toBe(text);
+    await n.dispose();
+  });
+
   it('init runs once across many sanitize calls', async () => {
     const n = new NullPii({ modelDir: '/fake', backend: 'cpu' });
     const r1 = await n.sanitize('First email: a@acme.io');