diff --git a/Makefile b/Makefile
index dc21ee351..4a54e321e 100644
--- a/Makefile
+++ b/Makefile
@@ -155,7 +155,7 @@ build_src_debug: $(if $(LEGACY_BUILD),build_src_debug_legacy,build_src_debug_def
 # RAG ingester (PoC)
 .PHONY: rag_ingest
 rag_ingest: build_deps
-	cd RAG_POC && ${MAKE} CC=${CC} CXX=${CXX} OPTZ="${O2} -ggdb" CXXFLAGS="${O2} -ggdb"
+	cd RAG_POC && ${MAKE} CC=${CC} CXX=${CXX} CXXFLAGS="${CXXFLAGS}"
 
 .PHONY: rag_ingest_clean
 rag_ingest_clean:
diff --git a/lib/MySQL_Catalog.cpp b/lib/MySQL_Catalog.cpp
index 5db2b0504..35c5e2681 100644
--- a/lib/MySQL_Catalog.cpp
+++ b/lib/MySQL_Catalog.cpp
@@ -290,7 +290,8 @@ std::string MySQL_Catalog::search(
 	// FTS5 search requires a query
 	if (query.empty()) {
 		proxy_error("Catalog search requires a query parameter\n");
-		return "[]";
+		nlohmann::json error_result = {{"error", "Catalog search requires a query parameter"}};
+		return error_result.dump();
 	}
 
 	// Helper lambda to escape single quotes for SQLite SQL literals