Every other *.sops.yaml in this repo carries sops metadata and ENC[] values; this one shipped with neither and both fields as literal REPLACE-ME. Two consequences: 'sops <file>' fails with 'sops metadata not found', so the documented operator step could not work; and Flux would pass the file through undecrypted and create the Secret with the literal placeholder strings. Encrypted in place with the repo's age recipient, placeholders intact. Round-trip verified: sops -d returns installer-url and console-password as REPLACE-ME, so the operator's workflow is now the normal one — sops the file, set both values, commit. Both fields need setting, not just the password: installer-url is also REPLACE-ME, which I had omitted from the operator instructions. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <[email protected]>