btw, one question, does the automation API still require the user to download/install the Pulumi CLI first, or is this handled automatically (not-needed?) somehow? I can see this

await stack.workspace.installPlugin("aws", "v3.6.1");

, this looks promising already.

Current implementation shells out commands to the CLI, so installing a CLI is still required

great, thanks!

A community member was publishing the CLI via npm at one point, but it looks like it hasn't been kept up to date. https://github.com/Dev-Thought/pulumi-npm

Interesting.