Bug: unexpected behavior with special characters in input

When using special characters in the input field, the output is incorrect.

Expected: proper escaping and handling
Actual: characters are stripped or cause errors

This might be related to the encoding changes in the last release.

Start by reproducing the incorrect output with inputs containing special characters, then inspect the encoding changes from the last release to identify the affected path. Done means special characters are properly escaped and handled without being stripped or causing errors.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.