Two headers of the same name both arrive rather than one overwriting the other, because nginx only replaces headers it sets with proxy_set_header. A comma inside a role name is indistinguishable from the delimiter, and the size limit is a cliff: Tomcat returns 400 around 8KB and the connection dies around 16KB, so the same cause produces two different-looking failures.
Forged identity headers reach the upstream untouched while the JWT-protected paths return 401, which is Q4's own point that a header-fed upstream has nothing to verify against. By Q4's checklist that answer alone points at the BFF structure.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
