Cloud Apps NodeJS issues with 'fs'

I have been struggling for a few days getting my NodeJS apps built and deployed.

I’ve reached out to support a few times but didn’t get any helpful reply.

My app crashes during build with the following:

error building image:
error building stage:
failed to optimize instructions: 
failed to get files used from context:
failed to get fileinfo for /.app_platform_workspace/settings.json:
lstat /.app_platform_workspace/settings.json:
no such file or directory

This is the Git repo I’m trying to run: https://github.com/healzer/DiscordEarsBot

The message indicates that settings.json is missing, which is correct however the only way I use this file in the code is here:

const SETTINGS_FILE = 'settings.json';


function loadConfig() {
    if (fs.existsSync(SETTINGS_FILE)) {
        const CFG_DATA = JSON.parse( fs.readFileSync(SETTINGS_FILE, 'utf8') );
        ...
    } else {
        ...
    }
}
loadConfig()

Due to the if-condition it shouldn’t read that settings file, and shouldn’t crash if it is missing. I’m assuming something is broken on DO’s side. Because I deploy this repo on Heroku and on my Ubuntu droplet without any problems.