diff --git a/src/__tests__/unit/title-fetch.test.ts b/src/__tests__/unit/title-fetch.test.ts
index 26f77b4..e18ab28 100644
--- a/src/__tests__/unit/title-fetch.test.ts
+++ b/src/__tests__/unit/title-fetch.test.ts
@@ -2,6 +2,15 @@ import { describe, expect, it, vi, afterEach } from "vitest";
 import { extractTitle, fetchPageTitle, isPublicHttpUrl } from "../../title-fetch";
 
 describe("extractTitle", () => {
+  it("decodes entities once, not recursively", () => {
+    expect(extractTitle("<title>a &amp;lt; b</title>")).toBe("a &lt; b");
+    expect(extractTitle("<title>&amp;amp;</title>")).toBe("&amp;");
+  });
+
+  it("decodes astral numeric references to a single code point", () => {
+    expect(extractTitle("<title>Hi &#128512;</title>")).toBe("Hi \u{1F600}");
+  });
+
   it("extracts a plain title", () => {
     expect(extractTitle("<html><head><title>Hello World</title></head></html>")).toBe("Hello World");
   });
diff --git a/src/title-fetch.ts b/src/title-fetch.ts
index 3ab68db..3d0a1a5 100644
--- a/src/title-fetch.ts
+++ b/src/title-fetch.ts
@@ -208,15 +208,15 @@ export function extractTitle(html: string): string | null {
   const match = html.match(/<title[^>]*>([\s\S]*?)<\/title>/i);
   if (!match) return null;
 
+  const named: Record<string, string> = { amp: "&", lt: "<", gt: ">", quot: '"' };
+  // One pass: chained replaces would decode "&amp;lt;" twice into "<".
   const raw = match[1]
     .replace(/\s+/g, " ")
-    .replace(/&amp;/g, "&")
-    .replace(/&lt;/g, "<")
-    .replace(/&gt;/g, ">")
-    .replace(/&quot;/g, '"')
-    .replace(/&#39;/g, "'")
-    .replace(/&#x27;/g, "'")
-    .replace(/&#(\d+);/g, (_, code) => String.fromCharCode(parseInt(code, 10)))
+    .replace(/&(?:#x([0-9a-f]+)|#(\d+)|(amp|lt|gt|quot));/gi, (whole, hex, dec, name) => {
+      if (name) return named[name.toLowerCase()];
+      const code = hex ? parseInt(hex, 16) : parseInt(dec, 10);
+      return code <= 0x10ffff ? String.fromCodePoint(code) : whole;
+    })
     .trim();
 
   return raw || null;