I'm working on a React project using Vite. My JSON files are placed in public/data/2025. Most of them, such as muenster.json, load just fine via http://localhost:5173/data/2025/muenster.json. However, every newly added file, e.g. cologne.json, keeps failing. Vite just serves index.html for those files.

I have verified that:

• The file paths are correct (public/data/2025/cologne.json).

• The JSON file is valid JSON (checked with JSON validators).

• The file permissions are the same as muenster.json.

• I've tried removing any possible BOM (Byte Order Mark) or hidden characters using hexdump and xattr on macOS.

• I restarted the dev server multiple times (npm run dev).

• I tested a minimal file ({"test":true}) in the same folder, and that also doesn't load.

• My vite.config.js is very minimal:

  import { defineConfig } from 'vite' import react from '@vitejs/plugin-react'
  
  export default defineConfig({ plugins: [react()], server: { fs: { strict: false } } })
  

Other JSON files from that folder can be fetched and parsed without issues. Why would one (or more) JSON file(s) in public/data/ not be served properly, while all the others are? Is there something else I need to configure in Vite to ensure every file in the public folder is served without issues?