Incorrect error in case of invalid foreign entity name reference with plugin

[shivaygupta-dotcom]

While running sync/diff, if a plugin references a foreign entity that doesn’t exist, the request goes through without being caught by decK. As a result, the call reaches the gateway, which then returns below error.

Error: 1 errors occurred:
	while processing event: Create plugin rate-limiting for service example-service and consumer shivay failed: HTTP status 400 (message: "schema violation (consumer.id: expected a valid UUID)")

This error can be misleading, because the root cause is that the referenced entity is missing, but decK does not validate or catch this earlier in the flow.

Ideally, in such cases, decK should fail early and return a clear error indicating that the referenced entity was not found, instead of letting the request reach the gateway and surface a misleading error.

Steps to reproduce :

I am running below file, but the consumer is not defined not in the state file neither globally.

_format_version: "3.0"
services:
  - name: example-service
    port: 3200
    protocol: http
    host: localhost
    plugins:
      - config:
          limit_by: consumer
          minute: 6
          policy: local
        consumer: alice  
        enabled: true
        name: rate-limiting
        protocols:
            - http

Error:

Error: 1 errors occurred:
	while processing event: Create plugin rate-limiting for service example-service and consumer shivay failed: HTTP status 400 (message: "schema violation (consumer.id: expected a valid UUID)")