diff --git a/.jules/bolt.md b/.jules/bolt.md
index 341c7c9..457d6b0 100644
--- a/.jules/bolt.md
+++ b/.jules/bolt.md
@@ -67,3 +67,6 @@
 ## 2025-02-12 - [Fast Path Execution in Directory Traversal and Log Parsing]
 **Learning:** Checking for string existence (`if "silence_" not in stderr`) before invoking regex matchers provides significant speed improvements when parsing large blocks of text. Similarly, moving expensive I/O operations like `os.path.realpath` inside conditional blocks prevents redundant disk access when configuration (like path exclusions) isn't utilized.
 **Action:** When working on large text processing or disk operations, verify if early exit conditions or conditional execution can bypass the expensive system or library calls.
+## 2024-07-18 - [Optimize tokenization and word stripping with fast path string checks]
+**Learning:** Regex execution in Python, even when compiled, is slower than simple string methods. When parsing or tokenizing text to strip non-word characters, prepend a fast-path check using `str.isalnum()` to bypass the regex overhead for purely alphanumeric words, yielding significant performance gains.
+**Action:** When tokenizing or processing text using regular expressions to strip non-word characters, prepend a fast-path check using `str.isalnum()` (or similar) to bypass the regex overhead for purely alphanumeric words.
diff --git a/summarize.py b/summarize.py
index a5b56fe..ad383d9 100644
--- a/summarize.py
+++ b/summarize.py
@@ -94,7 +94,10 @@ def _content_words(sentence):
     """
     words = []
     for raw in sentence.split():
-        token = _TOKEN_STRIP_RE.sub("", raw).lower()
+        if raw.isalnum():
+            token = raw.lower()
+        else:
+            token = _TOKEN_STRIP_RE.sub("", raw).lower()
         if token and token not in _STOPWORDS:
             words.append(token)
     return words
diff --git a/transcript_search.py b/transcript_search.py
index 5bb2fac..e25537a 100644
--- a/transcript_search.py
+++ b/transcript_search.py
@@ -67,6 +67,9 @@ def tokenize(text: str) -> list[str]:
     Returns:
         List of lowercase tokens (possibly empty).
     """
+    # Fast path: skip regex if text is purely alphanumeric and spaces
+    if text.replace(" ", "").isalnum():
+        return text.lower().split()
     return _WORD_RE.findall(text.lower())