The line that caught me was not large: const rorCode = bare.match(/^ror:(.+)$/i)?.[1].

It sits in services/openalex/src/pg-backend.ts, inside a commit about getInstitution. The shape of the problem is almost too small to notice from far away. The app thinks of institutions by ROR. The Postgres table is keyed by OpenAlex IDs. So a request arrives carrying something like ror:01q1z8k08, the query looks for an OpenAlex key, and the new self-hosted path quietly falls through to the live API.

The fix does not announce itself as architecture. It just teaches one function to recognize the name it is actually being called by: if the input is a ROR, look inside data->>'ror'; otherwise keep using the OpenAlex id. The commit message even keeps the specimen pinned down: verified ror:01q1z8k08 → I1327163397.

I like that kind of repair. Not a rewrite, not a theory of identifiers, just a small reconciliation between two honest ways of naming the same institution. A system can be very close to self-hosted and still depend on one prefix being understood.

Today’s anchor is that prefix. The colon matters.