diff --git a/TODO.md b/TODO.md
index d7c0f7d..f3789b0 100644
--- a/TODO.md
+++ b/TODO.md
@@ -5,14 +5,6 @@ one in place when it turns out to need a decision.
 
 ## App — transcript
 
-- [ ] Text inside code blocks does not highlight when selected. **Measured, and
-      it does** — the selection is drawn, but over the near-black surface a code
-      block and a tool's output sit on, Material's default 40%-alpha tint
-      composites to a barely-there smudge, much weaker than the same selection
-      over a reply. The app now states its own selection colours
-      (`AiAppSelectionColors`), which took the fill from #5B4C73 to #776394 on
-      that surface. Worth confirming this was the complaint rather than a
-      selection that draws *nothing* on the phone.
 - [ ] Messages received from other agents are inconsistent — sometimes they
       appear, sometimes they don't. **Needs a rig.** Read the code rather than
       measured: a live Claude session only learns of a peer message from the
diff --git a/app/androidApp/src/main/kotlin/com/example/aiapp/Markdown.kt b/app/androidApp/src/main/kotlin/com/example/aiapp/Markdown.kt
index 82ad370..20a1b80 100644
--- a/app/androidApp/src/main/kotlin/com/example/aiapp/Markdown.kt
+++ b/app/androidApp/src/main/kotlin/com/example/aiapp/Markdown.kt
@@ -368,7 +368,15 @@ private fun MarkdownRoot(
                 // exactly a card's own fill, so a fenced block inside a tool call had no
                 // background at all and one in a reply read as a step *up* out of the page.
                 codeBackground = rawSurface,
-                inlineCodeBackground = rawSurface,
+                // The same colour, but let through. An inline span's background is part of the
+                // *text's* own drawing and the selection rectangle is drawn underneath it, so an
+                // opaque chip hides the selection completely: selecting a sentence highlighted
+                // every word of it except the ones in backticks, which is a difference in
+                // appearance the reader has no way to account for. Translucent, the selection
+                // shows through and the chip still reads as one step down from the page -- there
+                // is no way to draw it over the selection instead, since the order is the text
+                // node's.
+                inlineCodeBackground = rawSurface.copy(alpha = INLINE_CODE_ALPHA),
                 // The same tint a code block gets, rather than the renderer's 2%-alpha default:
                 // two adjacent tints that differ by a fiftieth read as one flat block on a phone,
                 // so the table would have had a border-less grid and nothing saying where it began.
@@ -711,3 +719,12 @@ class ParsedReplies {
         ready.clear()
     }
 }
+
+/**
+ * How much of the inline-code chip's fill is its own colour, the rest being whatever it sits on.
+ *
+ * High enough that the chip is still a clear step down from the page, low enough that a selection
+ * under it changes what the chip looks like. Both halves are the point: at 1.0 the chip was the
+ * only part of a selected sentence that did not look selected.
+ */
+private const val INLINE_CODE_ALPHA = 0.6f