apparently you have to call the file main.py ... sigh

Yeah, this is a standard Python thing - Pulumi loads your package as if it were a module and Python executes

__main__.py

when the module loads. Would you prefer something else?

nah, i dont really care. it's just not stated anywhere and python examples are really scarse, so i thought you can name it anything. and the error I was getting was extremely unhelpful 😞