diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 1634c5bd1..1b71b6b09 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -36,6 +36,9 @@
 
 - Director timeline seeks cross the dateline along the short longitude arc.
 
+- Recent Imagery’s exported `setBox` and `searchHls` reject missing, blank or
+  boolean programmatic box edges instead of interpreting them as zero coordinates.
+
 - Treat explicitly current, complete empty vessel coverage as a successful update,
   clearing obsolete contacts while retaining stale or incomplete snapshots.
 
diff --git a/docs/CURRENT-STATE.md b/docs/CURRENT-STATE.md
index de34656f6..7f9c94ff4 100644
--- a/docs/CURRENT-STATE.md
+++ b/docs/CURRENT-STATE.md
@@ -4453,6 +4453,11 @@ are omitted rather than framing the wrong part of the globe.
 
 ### Recent Imagery (September 2026)
 
+Programmatic boxes passed to the exported `setBox` and `searchHls` operations
+reject missing, blank or boolean edges instead of interpreting them as zero
+coordinates. Valid finite numeric edges remain accepted; the app’s drag tool,
+pins and share links already supply complete boxes.
+
 - The layer sits in the Data Layers panel's Cameras group beside Cameras (CCTV); Mapped ALPR Cameras moved to the Infrastructure group to make room.
 - DATA ▸ **Recent Imagery** (`recent-imagery`, `src/layers/recentImagery/`) lists the last 30 UTC days of imagery for a selected box and drapes the days you pick: HLS S30 (Sentinel-2) and L30 (Landsat 8/9) at 30 m, and the VIIRS NOAA-21 daily overview at 250 m. Keyless and browser-direct: NASA CMR for which days have HLS granules in the box (`catalog.js`, both collections concurrently, paged with `CMR-Search-After` up to 2,000 records each, `truncated` against CMR `hits`), GIBS WMTS for tiles, Worldview Snapshots for thumbnails and exports. Worldview's `Data-Present` header is the only availability signal: GIBS answers an empty tile with HTTP 200, and the JPEG overview would drape black, so a day confirmed empty never drapes.
 - **Box.** SELECT BOX (`src/ui/imageryBoxTool.js`) claims the pointer like Draw, borrows the stock click actions and freezes the camera only mid-drag; USE VIEW takes the camera rectangle; `boxFromPinAt` grows a 10 km box. Boxes must be ≤ 1,000 km a side, on one side of the dateline and inside the Web-Mercator limit (`validateBox`). A refusal (`boxError`, including the tool's own via `reportBoxRefusal`) stays at the top of the panel until a box succeeds; a view over the cap is refused with its size, never shrunk. An oversized box or view (`Box is … km wide · limit 1,000 km`, `View is … wide · …`) sets the hint to `Zoom in or draw a smaller box` and enables ZOOM IN: `zoomToFit()` flies top-down (1.2 s) to the refused box's centre, or the ground under the canvas centre for a view, at the height whose view is about 400 km wide for the canvas aspect and the camera's vertical FOV (`fitViewHeightM`, clamped 5–400 km), and returns that height.
diff --git a/src/layers/recentImagery/imagery-box-missing-edge.test.mjs b/src/layers/recentImagery/imagery-box-missing-edge.test.mjs
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..698bcaee5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/layers/recentImagery/imagery-box-missing-edge.test.mjs
@@ -0,0 +1,48 @@
+import test from 'node:test';
+import assert from 'node:assert/strict';
+import {
+  boxCentre,
+  boxFromRectangle,
+  dequantizeBox,
+  validateBox,
+} from './model.js';
+import { searchHls } from './catalog.js';
+
+test('missing imagery edges do not turn into invented zero coordinates', () => {
+  for (const value of [null, undefined, '', ' ', false, true]) {
+    const box = { west: value, south: 0, east: 1, north: 1 };
+    assert.equal(validateBox(box).ok, false);
+    assert.equal(validateBox(box).reason, 'invalid');
+    assert.equal(boxCentre(box), null);
+  }
+  assert.equal(validateBox({ west: 0, south: 0, east: 1, north: 1 }).ok, true);
+  assert.equal(
+    validateBox({ west: '0', south: '0', east: '1', north: '1' }).ok,
+    true,
+  );
+});
+
+test('every edge and every box entry point refuses a missing edge', async () => {
+  const blanks = [null, undefined, '', ' ', false, [], {}];
+  for (const edge of ['west', 'south', 'east', 'north']) {
+    for (const value of blanks) {
+      const box = { west: 1, south: 1, east: 2, north: 2, [edge]: value };
+      assert.equal(validateBox(box).ok, false, `${edge}=${String(value)}`);
+      // Share-link integers and Cesium radians are converted per edge.
+      assert.equal(dequantizeBox(box), null, `share ${edge}`);
+      assert.equal(boxFromRectangle(box), null, `radians ${edge}`);
+    }
+  }
+  let fetched = false;
+  await assert.rejects(
+    searchHls({
+      box: { west: ' ', south: 1, east: 2, north: 2 },
+      fetchImpl: async () => {
+        fetched = true;
+      },
+    }),
+    TypeError,
+  );
+  assert.equal(fetched, false);
+  assert.ok(dequantizeBox({ west: 0, south: 0, east: 100000, north: 100000 }));
+});
diff --git a/src/layers/recentImagery/model.js b/src/layers/recentImagery/model.js
index 23f503e9e..24ef54fc6 100644
--- a/src/layers/recentImagery/model.js
+++ b/src/layers/recentImagery/model.js
@@ -75,6 +75,14 @@ const pad2 = (value) => String(value).padStart(2, '0');
  * east are not swapped: west > east crosses the dateline and `validateBox`
  * rejects it. Null when any edge is nonfinite.
  */
+/** A box edge as a number, or null when it is missing, blank or not numeric. */
+function edgeNumber(value) {
+  if (typeof value === 'number') return Number.isFinite(value) ? value : null;
+  if (typeof value !== 'string' || !value.trim()) return null;
+  const number = Number(value);
+  return Number.isFinite(number) ? number : null;
+}
+
 function normalizeBox(box) {
   if (!box || typeof box !== 'object') return null;
   const [west, south, east, north] = [
@@ -82,8 +90,8 @@ function normalizeBox(box) {
     box.south,
     box.east,
     box.north,
-  ].map(Number);
-  if (![west, south, east, north].every(Number.isFinite)) return null;
+  ].map(edgeNumber);
+  if ([west, south, east, north].some((edge) => edge == null)) return null;
   return {
     west,
     south: Math.min(south, north),
@@ -211,11 +219,16 @@ export function boxFromPin(lon, lat, sideKm = PIN_BOX_SIDE_KM) {
 
 function mapBox(box, fn) {
   if (!box || typeof box !== 'object') return null;
+  // Converting first would turn a blank edge into 0 before normalizeBox sees it.
+  const edge = (value) => {
+    const number = edgeNumber(value);
+    return number == null ? null : fn(number);
+  };
   return normalizeBox({
-    west: fn(box.west),
-    south: fn(box.south),
-    east: fn(box.east),
-    north: fn(box.north),
+    west: edge(box.west),
+    south: edge(box.south),
+    east: edge(box.east),
+    north: edge(box.north),
   });
 }