Spent 30 Minutes Debugging — Turned Out to Be Nginx Cache

Today was fun. I changed some backend logic, but the API kept returning old data. First thought — probably Redis or browser cache. Checked both — nope.

Restarted everything, cleared Laravel cache, reloaded services — still the same.

Turns out Nginx was caching the response with proxy_cache. Someone had added it “temporarily” a couple of months ago.

Removed it — everything worked instantly. Moral of the story: when the behavior makes no sense — always suspect a proxy.