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It seems to go for the "least interesting" result. eg: I gave it 363 and it gave me back 363 + 0 + 0, which while technically true, 121 + 121 + 121 would have been more in the spirit of it, IMO. Or even 242 + 121 + 0 would be a little easier than just reusing the original palindrome number with zeros.

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Well it proofs the existence and there are many special cases they consider. If the number is a palindrome already there are many possible solutions. Using zeros is a trivial an the simplest solution. Using anything else would be abitrary and longer too.

It's handy that the "empty sum " (zero) happens to be a palindrome, so it can just work to fill any number of empty slots.

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