Hi!

With your suggestions, I was able to get it - thank you! Here is what I ended up doing:

location = /admin { try_files /index.html =404; }
location ^~ /admin/ { alias /home/user/project/dist/; try_files $uri $uri/ /admin/index.html; }
location = / { # proxy_pass }
location ~ ^/[^/]+$ { # proxy_pass }

The results are perfect. I kinda wanted a single location to handle both admin cases, but it's not a big deal and the results are more important than the structure of the config, so I'm okay with it.

Thank you so much, you're the best!
-AC