btw, i guessed my way into {metadata:name} for disabling resource naming on namespaces, is there a way I could have figured that out from the docs?

It's described here: https://www.pulumi.com/docs/intro/concepts/resources/#autonaming

I saw that page but didn't see any mention of how to find out how to set it on different resources

Ah, the metadata part. I didn't know about that, I don't know if it's documented anywhere. I don't know of anyone who's ever looked for it before...