What versions & operating system are you using?

  System:
    OS: macOS 26.1
    CPU: (10) arm64 Apple M4
    Memory: 516.30 MB / 32.00 GB
    Shell: 5.9 - /bin/zsh
  Binaries:
    Node: 25.1.0 - /opt/homebrew/bin/node
    npm: 11.6.2 - /opt/homebrew/bin/npm
  npmPackages:
    wrangler: ^4.54.0 => 4.57.0 

Please provide a link to a minimal reproduction

https://github.com/Bi11/bug-report-infinite-loop.git

Describe the Bug

Wrangler incorrectly flags a valid _redirects rule / /index.html 200 as an "Infinite loop", blocking deployment.

Why this is a bug

1. No Implicit Loop: According to the HTML handling docs, when html_handling is set to "none", requesting / does not automatically serve index.html (it results in a 404 or falls back to not_found_handling). Therefore, explicitly rewriting / to /index.html is necessary logic, not a conflict.
2. Proxying is Non-Recursive: The rule uses status 200 (Proxying). The Redirects docs explicitly state: "Only the first redirect in your will apply." Even if the paths were identical, the proxy logic stops after one hop.
3. Validation Logic Error: The error message claims the rule will "cause a redirect to strip .html". However, stripping .html is a behavior of auto-trailing-slash or standard handling. Since html_handling is set to "none", this stripping behavior is disabled, making the described loop impossible.

Reproduction

1. Set html_handling: "none" in wrangler.jsonc.
2. Add the rule / /index.html 200 to public/_redirects.
3. Run npx wrangler pages dev or npm run deploy.

Actual Behavior

npm run dev output:

Infinite loop detected in this rule and has been ignored. This will cause a redirect to strip .html or /index and end up triggering this rule again. Please fix or remove this rule to silence this warning.
at public/_redirects:1 | / /index.html 200

npm run deploy output:

Invalid _redirects configuration:
Line 1: Infinite loop detected in this rule. This would cause a redirect to
strip `.html` or `/index` and end up triggering this rule again. [code: 10021]

Workaround

I am migrating a legacy site that requires html_handling: "none". To bypass this validation error, I had to rename the index file to _index.html and update the rule to:

/ /_index.html 200

This confirms the platform supports the behavior, and the blockage is purely due to Wrangler's over-aggressive validation.

Please provide any relevant error logs

No response