Thanks all for the thoughtful & helpful responses…
Ah, that’s an interesting observation that I think gets right to the root-cause of my confusion: The main doc for Performing Actions is written to cover cases both in and outside script syntax… but it happens to be written as part of the automation / scripting section and it also happens to use scripting examples in most places.
I think I must have over-interpreted this:
The configuration options to perform action are the same between all integrations and are described on this page.
Examples on this page will be given as part of an automation integration configuration but different approaches can be used for other integrations too.
I didn’t put much thought in to which things on the page above were generally true and which were specific to the script engine syntax specifically … and likewise I wasn’t asking myself whether various places in the YAML were likely to be using “script syntax” vs just “bare service action” implementations. I think with that distinction in mind I’ll find these situations a lot less baffling.
(I’ll also say that the dev-facing YAML style guide mostly uses block-style sequences to demonstrate service actions – absolutely valid, but implicitly script-specific IIUC.
Anyway thanks for the pointer… I think this will help me ask the right questions instead of just having the sense that I must be missing something.
I’ll certainly do this. (Edit: done)
I may also propose a few edits to tweak the docs for context/clarity.