Rotary Encoder only firing once

ESPHome
1

First foray in ESPHome and trying to hook up a Guition JC3636K518C-I-YR.
After finding the secret sauce in the many helpful forums I’ve got it connected and got some LVGL working.

But, the rotary encoder I need to make this a wife-safe device just doesn’t work consistently. It will fire a single message on restart when the knob is spun:
[09:05:53.454][D][main:581]: Knob turned → CLOCKWISE
[09:05:53.455][V][sensor:081]: ‘Rotary Knob Raw’: Received new state -1.000000
[09:05:53.459][D][sensor:133]: ‘Rotary Knob Raw’: Sending state -1.00000 steps with 0 decimals of accuracy

I know that the hardware is working OK, because the stock firmware worked.

Is my configuration wrong, or something harder to fix?

YAML below:

- platform: rotary_encoder
    id: knob
    name: "Rotary Knob Raw"
    pin_a:
      number: GPIO8
      mode:
        input: true
        pullup: true
    pin_b:
      number: GPIO7
      mode:
        input: true
        pullup: true
    publish_initial_value: true 
    on_clockwise:
      then:
        - logger.log: "Knob turned → CLOCKWISE"
    on_anticlockwise:
      then:
        - logger.log: "Knob turned → COUNTER-CLOCKWISE"
2

Lightbulb moment - it isn’t a rotary encoder at all. There are simply two binary sensors on GPIO7&8