Hmmmm… Well, the connection is there (and has been working for ages) - it’s on the same box. But perhaps “…decode…” could indicate that some “invalid” character has been put in the config file while editing?
One other thing. In the documentation for 2.5 you show all these options:
"import_docs" : true
"import_docs" : false
"import_docs" : "continuous"
The last one is not explained (but shown in the sample of the import_filter. So what is correct??
I really hope I can get this fixed before this afternoon… as I’m going to do a presentation on Couchbase to a bunch of “colleagues” (other consultants) tonight… 
It’s always like this with timing of such issues - thank you Murphy!! 