IOS API_KEY Unsupported Protocol Scheme

Question & Answer iOS
1

I want to run bitrise locally on my machine as a first setup, before i migrate everything to the cloud.
Google is working fine, apps are being built and deployed.

Now im working on the ios deployment.
The xcode archive step runs succesfully.
next is my deployment step:

        - deploy-to-itunesconnect-deliver:
            inputs:
                - bundle_id: "com.XXXXX.XXXXXX"  # Replace with your actual bundle ID
                - connection: "off"
                - api_key_path: "./AuthKey_XXXXXXXXX.p8"
                - api_issuer: "XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX"
                - submit_for_review: "no"

Error: Unsupported Protocol Sceme. referring to my .p8 file, which was generated in appstoreconnect and given to me by boss.

tried:
switched connection from off to api_key.
used deprecated deplyoment step with application loader.
tried using my email and pw instead, but thats also buggy in a different way and we really want to set this up using api key.

all solutions i can find are pointing me to setting it up in the cloud. which i want to. But i dont want to go through hundreds of trial and error pullrequests, until my bitrise.yml which is in the repo randomly starts working.