lmk if you want me to slow down / focus on getting my existing prs, but I took at look at this one today (local cache read and written to even with --no-local-cache) after it burned me for a couple hours. I think I mapped out a reasonable approach in this comment https://github.com/pantsbuild/pants/issues/21162#issuecomment-2664506771 If this sounds good I can put up a pr for it. The flag is being bypassed because the http_source isn't implemented as a process but directly in rust, so that flag would need to be checked there. I think this also means the remote cache is being bypassed, but thats a separate issue

No need to slow down - love the velocity! If you feel like we’re not responding quickly enough, we will try and step it up…

Don't feel obligated to put more load on yourselves, I just gotta figure out the right cadence and when/where to involve people (like issues vs slack). Especially around the "how should it be implemented" questions. If prs are better for that I can start there, but the rust changes definitely take longer than py