serve the page at the address that was asked for

try_files listed $uri/ before any index, so nginx answered /gallery/aldi/65 with
a 301 appending the slash. Every internal link on this site is the bare form —
the thumbnails, the lightbox hrefs, the chevrons — so every navigation paid a
redirect before anything on the page could start. Lighthouse measured it at 78 ms
on the critical path of the first request.

Naming index.html first serves the file directly. Both forms still work, neither
redirects, and $uri/ stays after it for a directory with no index.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

api/static-site.ts

@@ -306,7 +306,16 @@ const NGINX_CONF = `server {
 
   location / {
     # The build writes about/index.html, so a directory match is what serves /about.
-    try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
+    #
+    # $uri/index.html BEFORE $uri/, and the order is the whole point. A $uri/ match is a directory
+    # and nginx answers it with a 301 that appends the slash — so /gallery/aldi/65 cost a redirect
+    # before anything on the page could start. Every internal link on this site is the bare form (the
+    # thumbnails, the lightbox, the chevrons), so every navigation paid it: 78 ms on the critical path,
+    # measured, on the first request of every page.
+    #
+    # Naming index.html first serves the file at the address that was asked for. Both forms still work
+    # and neither redirects; $uri/ stays after it for a directory that has no index.
+    try_files $uri $uri/index.html $uri/ =404;
     add_header Cache-Control "no-cache";
   }
 }