diff --git a/src/lib/heuristics/openresume.ts b/src/lib/heuristics/openresume.ts
index 781247ae..5d9e0c19 100644
--- a/src/lib/heuristics/openresume.ts
+++ b/src/lib/heuristics/openresume.ts
@@ -73,7 +73,7 @@ export function parseHeuristic(
       sectionSource = "markdown";
     }
   }
-  if (!sections) sections = splitIntoSections(lines);
+  if (!sections) sections = splitIntoSections(lines, boundaries);
   return buildHeuristicResult(lines, sections, sectionSource, annotations);
 }
 
diff --git a/src/lib/heuristics/regex.test.ts b/src/lib/heuristics/regex.test.ts
index 6b675177..791603db 100644
--- a/src/lib/heuristics/regex.test.ts
+++ b/src/lib/heuristics/regex.test.ts
@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
 // Copyright 2026 The resumelint Authors
 
 import { describe, it, expect } from "vitest";
-import { matchSectionHeader } from "./regex.ts";
+import { matchSectionHeader, matchSectionAnchorToken } from "./regex.ts";
 
 describe("matchSectionHeader — split-letter headers (#56)", () => {
   it("matches a clean header unchanged", () => {
@@ -84,6 +84,11 @@ describe("matchSectionHeader — head-noun anchor fallback (#108 / #111)", () =>
     expect(matchSectionHeader("5 Years Experience")).toBeNull();
     expect(matchSectionHeader("10+ Years Experience")).toBeNull();
     expect(matchSectionHeader("3 Years Experience")).toBeNull();
+    // AC pin (#117): the text-only path stays unchanged when the L3 visual
+    // recovery lands — "20% Experience" must remain null here. The recovery
+    // for "20% Projects" lives in classifyLine's font-gated visual branch via
+    // matchSectionAnchorToken, never on this path.
+    expect(matchSectionHeader("20% Experience")).toBeNull();
   });
 
   it("rejects a header-shaped line ending in terminal punctuation", () => {
@@ -118,3 +123,30 @@ describe("matchSectionHeader — head-noun anchor fallback (#108 / #111)", () =>
     expect(matchSectionHeader("Spoken Languages")).toBeNull();
   });
 });
+
+describe("matchSectionAnchorToken — visual-path trailing anchor (#117)", () => {
+  it("recovers a section from a sidebar artifact glued onto the header", () => {
+    // The two-column flatten that motivates #117: a sidebar value `20%` is
+    // glued onto the real `Projects` header. The trailing token is the anchor,
+    // so the unguarded lookup recovers `projects`. (The font signal at the call
+    // site is what licenses skipping the prose guards.)
+    expect(matchSectionAnchorToken("20% Projects")).toBe("projects");
+  });
+
+  it("recovers past a leading noise-prefix glyph", () => {
+    // A leading bullet/box glyph is a sidebar/list artifact, not a prose marker
+    // on this font-gated path; the trailing anchor still wins.
+    expect(matchSectionAnchorToken("▪ Experience")).toBe("experience");
+  });
+
+  it("does NOT match a section whose anchorFallback is false (skills)", () => {
+    // `skills` has anchorFallback:false in the config, so even though `skills`
+    // is its anchor, the trailing-token lookup must reject it — matching the
+    // text-only path's treatment.
+    expect(matchSectionAnchorToken("Random Skills")).toBeNull();
+  });
+
+  it("returns null when the last token is not an anchor", () => {
+    expect(matchSectionAnchorToken("just some prose")).toBeNull();
+  });
+});
diff --git a/src/lib/heuristics/regex.ts b/src/lib/heuristics/regex.ts
index b61d8307..b0efd432 100644
--- a/src/lib/heuristics/regex.ts
+++ b/src/lib/heuristics/regex.ts
@@ -187,6 +187,46 @@ function matchAnchorFallback(
   return null;
 }
 
+/**
+ * Unguarded trailing-anchor lookup for the column-gated sidebar-header recovery
+ * path (#117).
+ *
+ * The unguarded cousin of {@link matchAnchorFallback}: it normalizes the text
+ * (trim, lowercase, strip a trailing `:·•`), splits into tokens, and returns
+ * the section whose anchor set contains the LAST token — provided that section
+ * has `anchorFallback` enabled (so `skills`/`other` are excluded by config).
+ *
+ * Unlike `matchAnchorFallback`, it applies NONE of the prose guards: no casing
+ * guard, no numeric-lead guard, no token-count guard, no terminal-punctuation
+ * guard. That is deliberate — this function recovers a real header that a
+ * two-column flatten glued a sidebar artifact onto (`"20% Projects"` → the
+ * `20%` is a sidebar value, `Projects` is the header). The guards that
+ * `matchAnchorFallback` uses to tell a heading from prose are replaced here by
+ * the CALLER'S column-membership signal: only `classifyLine`'s column-gated
+ * branch may call this, and only for a header-shaped line that sits in the
+ * SECONDARY column of a detected two-column layout (`line.x >= columnSplitX`).
+ * The digit-lead / prose forms it would otherwise admit (`"5 Years Experience"`,
+ * `"20% Experience"`) live in the MAIN column of those same documents — and in
+ * single-column documents the gate is absent entirely — so the column signal
+ * keeps them out.
+ *
+ * MUST NEVER be called on the text-only path (`matchSectionHeader`), which has
+ * no column signal to lean on — doing so would reopen the prose FP class that
+ * #115 closed.
+ */
+export function matchSectionAnchorToken(text: string): SectionName | null {
+  const normalized = text.trim().toLowerCase().replace(/[:·•]+$/, "").trim();
+  const tokens = normalized.split(/\s+/).filter((t) => t.length > 0);
+  if (tokens.length === 0) return null;
+  const last = tokens[tokens.length - 1];
+  for (const [name, anchors] of Object.entries(SECTION_ANCHORS) as Array<
+    [SectionName, ReadonlySet<string>]
+  >) {
+    if (anchors.has(last) && SECTION_ANCHOR_FALLBACKS.has(name)) return name;
+  }
+  return null;
+}
+
 /** True if the normalized line text matches any known section header. */
 export function matchSectionHeader(text: string): SectionName | null {
   const normalized = text.trim().toLowerCase().replace(/[:·•]+$/, "").trim();
diff --git a/src/lib/heuristics/sections.test.ts b/src/lib/heuristics/sections.test.ts
index 8a06dd36..2142eec9 100644
--- a/src/lib/heuristics/sections.test.ts
+++ b/src/lib/heuristics/sections.test.ts
@@ -25,8 +25,15 @@ import { mkItems } from "./__test-utils__/mkItem.ts";
 const HERE = dirname(fileURLToPath(import.meta.url));
 const FIXTURE_ROOT = join(HERE, "../../..", "tests/fixtures/pdfs");
 
-function build(specs: Array<{ text: string; fontSize?: number }>): PdfSection[] {
-  return splitIntoSections(groupIntoLines(mkItems(specs)));
+function build(
+  specs: Array<{ text: string; fontSize?: number; x?: number }>,
+  columnBoundaries?: Map<number, number>,
+): PdfSection[] {
+  const items = mkItems(specs);
+  return splitIntoSections(
+    groupIntoLines(items, columnBoundaries),
+    columnBoundaries,
+  );
 }
 
 /** Section names in document order (for boundary assertions). */
@@ -227,6 +234,73 @@ describe("splitIntoSections — visual-primary boundary path (#112)", () => {
       "education",
     ]);
   });
+
+  describe("column-gated sidebar-header recovery (#117)", () => {
+    // A two-column flatten glues a sidebar value ("20%") onto the "Projects"
+    // header, producing a body-size, text-identical-to-prose line. The ONLY
+    // signal that separates "20% Projects" (a real header in the secondary
+    // column) from main-column prose like "20% Experience" is column
+    // membership: line.x >= the page's column split-x. The maxFontSize is kept
+    // at body size in every case so these pin the COLUMN gate, not the L3 font
+    // path.
+    const TWO_COLUMN: Map<number, number> = new Map([[1, 384]]);
+
+    it("(a) recovers `projects` for a sidebar line in the secondary column", () => {
+      const sections = build(
+        [
+          { text: "Drew Hayes", fontSize: 20 }, // name
+          { text: "drew.hayes@example.com | (312) 555-0133", fontSize: 10 }, // contact
+          { text: "EXPERIENCE", fontSize: 13 }, // real keyword section — past the name block
+          { text: "Lead Engineer, Acme  02/2019 - Present", fontSize: 10 },
+          // Body-size (NOT font-distinct), secondary column (x=405 >= 384).
+          { text: "20% Projects", fontSize: 10, x: 405 },
+          { text: "Launched 10 new web fonts with external non-profit partners.", fontSize: 10, x: 405 },
+        ],
+        TWO_COLUMN,
+      );
+
+      // The sidebar-prefixed line opened a `projects` section, not `other`.
+      const projects = sectionContaining(sections, "Launched 10 new web fonts");
+      expect(projects).toBeDefined();
+      expect(projects!.name).toBe("projects");
+      expect(names(sections)).toContain("projects");
+      // No `other` sink was opened for the recovered header.
+      expect(names(sections).filter((n) => n === "other")).toHaveLength(0);
+    });
+
+    it("(b) does NOT recover the same line in the MAIN column (x < split)", () => {
+      const sections = build(
+        [
+          { text: "Drew Hayes", fontSize: 20 },
+          { text: "drew.hayes@example.com | (312) 555-0133", fontSize: 10 },
+          { text: "EXPERIENCE", fontSize: 13 },
+          { text: "Lead Engineer, Acme  02/2019 - Present", fontSize: 10 },
+          // Same text, body-size, MAIN column (x=50 < 384) — must NOT recover.
+          { text: "20% Projects", fontSize: 10, x: 50 },
+          { text: "Launched 10 new web fonts with external non-profit partners.", fontSize: 10, x: 50 },
+        ],
+        TWO_COLUMN,
+      );
+
+      // No `projects` section: the main-column line is treated as prose and
+      // stays appended to the open experience section.
+      expect(names(sections)).not.toContain("projects");
+    });
+
+    it("(c) does NOT recover in a single-column doc (no column boundaries)", () => {
+      const sections = build([
+        { text: "Drew Hayes", fontSize: 20 },
+        { text: "drew.hayes@example.com | (312) 555-0133", fontSize: 10 },
+        { text: "EXPERIENCE", fontSize: 13 },
+        { text: "Lead Engineer, Acme  02/2019 - Present", fontSize: 10 },
+        // Same body-size line, but no columnBoundaries passed — gate absent.
+        { text: "20% Projects", fontSize: 10 },
+        { text: "Launched 10 new web fonts with external non-profit partners.", fontSize: 10 },
+      ]);
+
+      expect(names(sections)).not.toContain("projects");
+    });
+  });
 });
 
 /**
diff --git a/src/lib/heuristics/sections.ts b/src/lib/heuristics/sections.ts
index bcea15ac..11aa4e1e 100644
--- a/src/lib/heuristics/sections.ts
+++ b/src/lib/heuristics/sections.ts
@@ -17,6 +17,7 @@
 import type { PdfTextItem } from "./types.ts";
 import {
   matchSectionHeader,
+  matchSectionAnchorToken,
   EMAIL_RE,
   PHONE_RE,
   LINKEDIN_RE,
@@ -281,19 +282,31 @@ function computeBodyBaseline(lines: PdfLine[]): number {
 }
 
 /**
- * True when a line is *visually* a header: short, unpunctuated, not a bullet,
- * and meaningfully larger than the body baseline. This is the L3 fallback
- * signal — it fires only after `matchSectionHeader` has already declined the
- * line (keyword path), so a line passing this test opens a boundary-only
- * `other` section (terminates the prior section without rendering).
+ * Header *shape* test, independent of font: short (≤ `VISUAL_HEADER_MAX_CHARS`
+ * chars, ≤ `VISUAL_HEADER_MAX_WORDS` words), not a bullet line, and not ending
+ * in terminal sentence punctuation. This is the structural half of
+ * `isVisualHeader`; the column-gated sidebar-header recovery (#117) reuses the
+ * exact same predicate so the two paths can never drift on what counts as
+ * header-shaped.
+ */
+function isHeaderShort(text: string): boolean {
+  const t = text.trim();
+  if (t.length === 0 || t.length > VISUAL_HEADER_MAX_CHARS) return false;
+  if (VISUAL_BULLET_RE.test(t)) return false;
+  if (TERMINAL_PUNCT_RE.test(t)) return false;
+  const words = t.split(/\s+/).filter((w) => w.length > 0);
+  return words.length <= VISUAL_HEADER_MAX_WORDS;
+}
+
+/**
+ * True when a line is *visually* a header: header-shaped (`isHeaderShort`) and
+ * meaningfully larger than the body baseline. This is the L3 fallback signal —
+ * it fires only after `matchSectionHeader` has already declined the line
+ * (keyword path), so a line passing this test opens a boundary-only `other`
+ * section (terminates the prior section without rendering).
  */
 function isVisualHeader(line: PdfLine, bodyBaseline: number): boolean {
-  const text = line.text.trim();
-  if (text.length === 0 || text.length > VISUAL_HEADER_MAX_CHARS) return false;
-  if (VISUAL_BULLET_RE.test(text)) return false;
-  if (TERMINAL_PUNCT_RE.test(text)) return false;
-  const words = text.split(/\s+/).filter((w) => w.length > 0);
-  if (words.length > VISUAL_HEADER_MAX_WORDS) return false;
+  if (!isHeaderShort(line.text)) return false;
   return line.maxFontSize >= bodyBaseline * VISUAL_HEADER_FONT_RATIO;
 }
 
@@ -330,7 +343,7 @@ function hasContactShape(text: string): boolean {
  * everything between headers. Content above the first header lands in the
  * synthetic `profile` section.
  *
- * A line opens a section boundary when EITHER:
+ * A line opens a section boundary when ANY of:
  *   - keyword path: `matchSectionHeader` (L1 exact alias → L2 head-noun anchor)
  *     returns a canonical name → label = that section; or
  *   - visual path (L3 / #112): the line is visually a header (`isVisualHeader`)
@@ -338,7 +351,15 @@ function hasContactShape(text: string): boolean {
  *     keyword path has already declined the line by this point, so the label is
  *     always `other` — the boundary-only sink that terminates the prior section
  *     without rendering (`regex.ts` keeps `other` out of the anchor path and out
- *     of every `findSection` lookup in `openresume.ts`).
+ *     of every `findSection` lookup in `openresume.ts`); or
+ *   - column-gated sidebar recovery (#117): a body-size, header-shaped line in
+ *     the SECONDARY column of a detected two-column layout (`columnBoundaries`)
+ *     whose trailing token is a fallback-enabled section anchor → label = that
+ *     section. This recovers a real header that a two-column flatten glued a
+ *     sidebar bar-value onto ("20% Projects"). The column signal stands in for
+ *     the prose guards the unguarded `matchSectionAnchorToken` lookup drops, so
+ *     it never fires on main-column prose ("5 Years Experience") or single-
+ *     column docs.
  *
  * Name/contact disambiguation: the leading profile region opens with a cluster
  * of large-font name / title / tagline lines (a résumé header), then the
@@ -351,8 +372,18 @@ function hasContactShape(text: string): boolean {
  * while still letting a font-distinct invented header below the contact block
  * open a boundary. Once any section has opened, the disambiguation no longer
  * applies (a visual header is then unconditionally a real boundary).
+ *
+ * `columnBoundaries` is the per-page split-x map from `detectColumnBoundaries`
+ * (present only for detected two-column pages; undefined/empty otherwise). It
+ * feeds the sidebar-header recovery branch in `classifyLine` (#117): a glued
+ * sidebar artifact like `"20% Projects"` in the secondary column recovers its
+ * real section name. For single-column docs the map is absent and that branch
+ * never fires — output stays byte-identical to the pre-#117 behavior.
  */
-export function splitIntoSections(lines: PdfLine[]): PdfSection[] {
+export function splitIntoSections(
+  lines: PdfLine[],
+  columnBoundaries?: Map<number, number>,
+): PdfSection[] {
   const sections: PdfSection[] = [{ name: "profile", lines: [] }];
   const bodyBaseline = computeBodyBaseline(lines);
   // True until the first non-profile section (keyword or visual) opens.
@@ -362,11 +393,14 @@ export function splitIntoSections(lines: PdfLine[]): PdfSection[] {
   let seenContactInProfile = false;
 
   for (const line of lines) {
+    // Per-line column split-x (undefined for single-column pages / docs).
+    const columnSplitX = columnBoundaries?.get(line.page);
     const action = classifyLine(
       line,
       bodyBaseline,
       openedRealSection,
       seenContactInProfile,
+      columnSplitX,
     );
     if (action.kind === "open") {
       sections.push({ name: action.name, lines: [] });
@@ -398,6 +432,7 @@ function classifyLine(
   bodyBaseline: number,
   openedRealSection: boolean,
   seenContactInProfile: boolean,
+  columnSplitX: number | undefined,
 ): LineAction {
   const header = matchSectionHeader(line.text);
   if (header) return { kind: "open", name: header };
@@ -416,6 +451,23 @@ function classifyLine(
     return { kind: "open", name: "other" };
   }
 
+  // Two-column sidebar artifact: a flatten can glue a sidebar bar-value onto a
+  // real header in the secondary column ("20% Projects"). The line is body-size
+  // (no visual signal, so the branch above did not fire) and a single glued run
+  // (no x-gap), so the only signal that separates it from main-column prose like
+  // "5 Years Experience" is that it sits in the secondary column of a detected
+  // two-column layout. Gate the unguarded trailing-anchor lookup on that column
+  // signal + a header-short shape. Skipped entirely for single-column docs
+  // (columnSplitX undefined) and main-column lines (line.x < split).
+  if (
+    columnSplitX !== undefined &&
+    line.x >= columnSplitX &&
+    isHeaderShort(line.text)
+  ) {
+    const recovered = matchSectionAnchorToken(line.text);
+    if (recovered) return { kind: "open", name: recovered };
+  }
+
   return { kind: "append", marksContactEnd: !openedRealSection && contactShaped };
 }
 
diff --git a/tests/fixtures/pdfs/unknown/chromium-two-column-sidebar.expected.json b/tests/fixtures/pdfs/unknown/chromium-two-column-sidebar.expected.json
index 6f731a64..8e9bb578 100644
--- a/tests/fixtures/pdfs/unknown/chromium-two-column-sidebar.expected.json
+++ b/tests/fixtures/pdfs/unknown/chromium-two-column-sidebar.expected.json
@@ -22,6 +22,7 @@
       "heuristic_achievements",
       "location",
       "phone",
+      "projects",
       "skills",
       "summary",
       "website_url"
@@ -29,7 +30,7 @@
     "skillsCount": 10,
     "experienceCount": 5,
     "educationCount": 1,
-    "projectsCount": 0,
+    "projectsCount": 2,
     "achievementsCount": 1,
     "rawTextCharCount": 3905,
     "pageCount": 2,