static assets routes returns the home page contents instead of 404

[damnitrahul]

I have a large NextJS + PayloadCMS website which uses [email protected].

When I try to access asset routes from the public directory like /favicon.ico or /this-file-exists.js it returns the file correctly.

But, when I try to access an asset like /xyz.js which isn't available on the server the app returns the home page /[locale]/page.tsx where the value of props.params.locale is set as xyz.js

Instead, it should ideally return a 404 /[locale]/not-found.tsx page.

This is what my matcher looks like currently

export const config = {
  matcher: ['/(sitemap.xml|(?!_next/|_proxy/|_auth/|_root/|_static|.well-known|_vercel|[\\w-]+\\.\\w+).*)'],
};

What's wrong with my setup? It would be great if someone could point me in the right direction 🙏🏼