_ensure_client() returns None - not False - when USE_OLLAMA is false, because
it returns before it ever probes. SystemStatusOut.ollama_connected is typed
bool, so pydantic rejected the None and the endpoint answered 500 on exactly
the configuration this deployment runs.
Found by smoke-testing the live host: every other read route answered 200 and
this one alone was a server error, which read like a database problem and was
not one. "Ollama is off" now reports as ollama_connected: false.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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