An in-cluster consumer reaches a service by its *.svc.cluster.local name, which is by design a different path from how a client outside the cluster reaches the same service. pm-worker's host allowlist accepted TWO values: the cluster-local name and the external hostname gitea.home.keithjackson.dev. The second is removed. It was never needed — nothing sets it — it would route in-cluster traffic out through the Gateway and back for no reason, and as an ACCEPTED value it widened the allowlist to a host reachable over the namespace's world:443 egress rule, which is precisely the injection shape the allowlist exists to refuse. probe-validation.sh now pins that: 20 refusals, including the external hostname, the cluster-local name over https, and the cluster-local name on the wrong port. Also corrects a remark in the handoff entry: I cited cluster-vars' GATEWAY_VIP (192.168.1.53) as suspicious next to the nodes' 192.168.2.x. That was noise — those base cluster-vars values are dev-era leftovers for a decommissioned cluster and say nothing about prod. None of the measured facts depended on it. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]>