diff --git a/next.config.ts b/next.config.ts
index ece0984d..a68ed197 100644
--- a/next.config.ts
+++ b/next.config.ts
@@ -121,23 +121,12 @@ const nextConfig: NextConfig = {
           },
         ],
       },
-      {
-        // Sitemap: force-dynamic in the route file (Data Cache 2MB cap
-        // blows past for the 500+ URL corpus), so nothing caches it by
-        // default and every crawler hit re-runs the full loader chain.
-        // Hold it edge-side for an hour with SWR so cold hits stay fast.
-        source: "/sitemap.xml",
-        headers: [
-          {
-            key: "Cache-Control",
-            value: "public, s-maxage=3600, stale-while-revalidate=86400",
-          },
-        ],
-      },
       {
         // Citable JSON is polled by LLM crawlers (Perplexity, ChatGPT,
         // Claude Deep Research) — a bare `public` with no s-maxage sent
-        // every scrape to origin. Same freshness window as sitemap.
+        // every scrape to origin. Sitemap's Cache-Control is set inside
+        // its route.ts (`src/app/sitemap.xml/route.ts`) because metadata
+        // routes ignore next.config headers().
         source: "/api/citable",
         headers: [
           {
diff --git a/src/app/sitemap.xml/route.ts b/src/app/sitemap.xml/route.ts
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..792642d9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/app/sitemap.xml/route.ts
@@ -0,0 +1,61 @@
+import type { MetadataRoute } from "next";
+import { buildSitemap } from "@/lib/sitemap-builder";
+
+// Route Handler (not Metadata Route). Reason: the previous
+// `src/app/sitemap.ts` metadata route left Next in charge of the
+// response headers and hard-coded `Cache-Control: public, max-age=0,
+// must-revalidate` on force-dynamic sitemaps — every crawler hit
+// re-ran the full loader chain (`x-vercel-cache: MISS` observed
+// 2026-07-26). A user-side `next.config.ts headers()` entry for
+// `/sitemap.xml` was silently ignored because metadata routes emit
+// their own Cache-Control that overrides the config layer.
+//
+// Route Handlers return a raw `Response`, so we control the headers
+// end-to-end. Same builder logic (buildSitemap in `src/lib/`), just
+// serialized to XML here and shipped with a real edge cache header.
+export const runtime = "nodejs";
+export const dynamic = "force-dynamic";
+
+function escapeXml(s: string): string {
+  return s
+    .replace(/&/g, "&")
+    .replace(/</g, "&lt;")
+    .replace(/>/g, "&gt;")
+    .replace(/"/g, "&quot;")
+    .replace(/'/g, "&apos;");
+}
+
+function toIso(v: MetadataRoute.Sitemap[number]["lastModified"]): string | null {
+  if (!v) return null;
+  const d = v instanceof Date ? v : new Date(v);
+  return Number.isNaN(d.getTime()) ? null : d.toISOString();
+}
+
+function serialize(entries: MetadataRoute.Sitemap): string {
+  const urls = entries
+    .map((e) => {
+      const parts = [`<url><loc>${escapeXml(e.url)}</loc>`];
+      const iso = toIso(e.lastModified);
+      if (iso) parts.push(`<lastmod>${iso}</lastmod>`);
+      if (e.changeFrequency) parts.push(`<changefreq>${e.changeFrequency}</changefreq>`);
+      if (e.priority !== undefined) parts.push(`<priority>${e.priority}</priority>`);
+      parts.push(`</url>`);
+      return parts.join("");
+    })
+    .join("");
+  return `<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>\n<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">\n${urls}\n</urlset>`;
+}
+
+export async function GET() {
+  const entries = await buildSitemap();
+  return new Response(serialize(entries), {
+    headers: {
+      "Content-Type": "application/xml; charset=utf-8",
+      // Edge holds the sitemap for an hour + SWR window so the loader
+      // chain only runs once per hour per region rather than on every
+      // crawler hit. Aligns with the /api/citable header set in
+      // next.config.ts.
+      "Cache-Control": "public, s-maxage=3600, stale-while-revalidate=86400",
+    },
+  });
+}
diff --git a/src/app/sitemap.ts b/src/lib/sitemap-builder.ts
similarity index 99%
rename from src/app/sitemap.ts
rename to src/lib/sitemap-builder.ts
index 04545af2..67a158e4 100644
--- a/src/app/sitemap.ts
+++ b/src/lib/sitemap-builder.ts
@@ -504,7 +504,7 @@ async function buildFullSitemap(): Promise<MetadataRoute.Sitemap> {
   ];
 }
 
-export default async function sitemap(): Promise<MetadataRoute.Sitemap> {
+export async function buildSitemap(): Promise<MetadataRoute.Sitemap> {
   try {
     return await buildFullSitemap();
   } catch (err) {