Bring the local first approach back

[tupui]

What problem does your feature solve?

There was a change introduced recently to use by default a global configuration. I want to point out two issues with the change:

1. This goes against a common pattern with CLIs. It's the same everywhere in the resolution order: env -> local -> global. We break an established convention and I argue that in the present case, we even have a security issue at hand since we are talking about private keys potentially used on production. I don't think we would want to mix keys used for a hackathon with keys used to deploy a contract handling millions of TVL.
2. Process: this was a big API change and it should have been communicated to the wider community. I am now watching all the repository from the org because things like that happened a few times now. I raised my voice on a few issues already. In my opinion this is not good. I think I follow pretty well what is happening in Stellar. If someone like me gets caught by surprises by changes, it's not a good thing for folks in general. I am all for moving fast but we need to have a clear information policy and opportunity for people to engage with change.

What would you like to see?

1. come back to a local first approach.
2. Any public facing API change on this repo or in general should be brought to the wider community. A minima, I would suggest creating a dedicated space on Discord to list these. You can then set a silent consensus policy as to keep the ball rolling. What really matters is that people clearly know how to keep tab on things.

What alternatives are there?

Up for discussion.

[leighmcculloch]

To add context, the original issue for the change being discussed here is:

• https://github.com/stellar/stellar-cli/issues/1993 (April 2025)

The first phase of the feature, that still reads from local configs, was implemented in https://github.com/stellar/stellar-cli/pull/2079 and released in v23.0.1 (August 2025), but I don't think phrases 2 and 3 have been implemented yet.

[tupui]

Thanks for the links. I've seen it in August. I just took the time now to make this issue.

I think things like that should be presented somewhere else than on GitHub. There are too maybe repo to follow and it's a lot of reading to do just to keep tab on breaking changes.