diff --git a/src/llama.cpp b/src/llama.cpp
index 2b9ace285..80cc1da26 100644
--- a/src/llama.cpp
+++ b/src/llama.cpp
@@ -13200,6 +13200,8 @@ struct llm_build_context {
                     LLM_NORM_RMS, cb, -1);
             cb(cur, "result_norm", -1);
         } else {
+            GGML_ASSERT(n_outputs_enc > 0 && "call llama_encode() first");
+
             struct ggml_tensor * embd_enc       = llm_build_inp_embd_enc();
             struct ggml_tensor * pos_bucket_dec = llm_build_pos_bucket(true);