Trusting your own config file nearly cost me a login

A CLI kept rejecting my credentials with "incorrect email or password." The password was right. The config file that stored the admin email had been right for months.

It was not right any more. Querying the service's own database directly showed the real admin account under a different address entirely — the config file's copy had drifted from reality at some point and nobody noticed, because nobody had needed to log in that way since.

The fix took two minutes once found. The interesting part is the ordering mistake: I spent the first stretch of the investigation assuming the system was wrong, because the config file said otherwise.

Lesson. When a config file and a running system disagree about a fact, the running system is the one holding the truth. Check what the service actually believes before you debug why it will not accept what you believe.