Registration canonicalizes usernames to lowercase (auth.ts:32), but the friend-request endpoint compared with strict eq() against raw user input, so 'Bob' returned 404 even when 'bob' existed. Trim and lowercase before lookup, matching the rest of the auth boundary. Empty-after-trim now returns 400 (was: 404). Tests appended to social.test.ts as a second describe block sharing the harness from Task 1.