diff --git a/internal/app/bots/gifbot.go b/internal/app/bots/gifbot.go
index 0443511d..f5d2a01b 100644
--- a/internal/app/bots/gifbot.go
+++ b/internal/app/bots/gifbot.go
@@ -19,11 +19,16 @@ func (s *Service) HandlesInlineBot(botUserID int64) bool {
 }
 
 // OnInlineQuery serves @gif's admin-curated catalog as inline gif results,
-// ordered by title relevance to query (see rankGifCatalogEntries).
+// ordered by title relevance to query (see rankGifCatalogEntries) or, for a
+// category-icon tap, filtered to that category (see gifCategoryFromQuery).
 //
-// offset/paging is not implemented: the catalog is bounded by
-// MaxGifCatalogEntries, which is MaxBotInlineResults, so one response always
-// carries all of it.
+// offset/paging is not implemented: filtering/ranking runs over the whole
+// catalog (an operator's library can run into the thousands, see
+// files.Service.ListGifCatalog's doc comment for why that fetch is
+// deliberately unbounded), then the result is truncated to
+// MaxGifCatalogEntries -- the real per-response cap the client enforces --
+// so one response always carries as much of the *relevant* slice as fits,
+// not an arbitrary (sort_order, id) prefix of the whole catalog.
 //
 // Note TDesktop only ever calls this with a non-empty query: its GIF tab has
 // no trending panel, and GifsListWidget::searchForGifs returns early on an
@@ -52,6 +57,9 @@ func (s *Service) OnInlineQuery(ctx context.Context, botUserID, _ int64, query,
 	if len(entries) == 0 {
 		return domain.BotInlineResults{Gallery: true}, true, nil
 	}
+	if len(entries) > domain.MaxGifCatalogEntries {
+		entries = entries[:domain.MaxGifCatalogEntries]
+	}
 	ids := make([]int64, len(entries))
 	for i, e := range entries {
 		ids[i] = e.DocumentID
diff --git a/internal/app/files/gif_admin.go b/internal/app/files/gif_admin.go
index b9711087..c7d8ff37 100644
--- a/internal/app/files/gif_admin.go
+++ b/internal/app/files/gif_admin.go
@@ -152,13 +152,18 @@ func (s *Service) AdminListGifCatalog(ctx context.Context) ([]domain.GifCatalogE
 }
 
 // ListGifCatalog is bots.gifCatalogSource's read: onlyEnabled=true is what
-// @gif actually serves, capped at domain.MaxGifCatalogEntries -- the real
-// per-response limit the client enforces.
+// @gif actually serves. Deliberately unbounded, not capped at
+// domain.MaxGifCatalogEntries here -- bots.Service filters/ranks by category
+// or query text over the *whole* catalog and only then takes the top
+// MaxGifCatalogEntries for one response. Capping the fetch itself would
+// silently limit that filtering to an arbitrary (sort_order, id) slice of a
+// large catalog, e.g. a category tap finding none of its members among the
+// first 50 rows and falling back to showing the unfiltered catalog instead.
 func (s *Service) ListGifCatalog(ctx context.Context, onlyEnabled bool) ([]domain.GifCatalogEntry, error) {
 	if s.gifCatalog == nil {
 		return nil, nil
 	}
-	return s.gifCatalog.ListGifCatalog(ctx, onlyEnabled, domain.MaxGifCatalogEntries)
+	return s.gifCatalog.ListGifCatalog(ctx, onlyEnabled, 0)
 }
 
 // AdminSetGifCatalogEnabled toggles whether an entry is served.