Hi @bdmacnee, I am the product manager who owns this new functionality. First of all, I want to say thank you for sharing your feedback, I really appreciate the perspective. We’re constantly looking for ways to simplify complicated things for our users, and starting a new project from scratch was one area that we got consistent feedback from users that it felt more complex than it needed to be.
This is indeed a gradual rollout, so that’s why the “Getting Started” guide has not been fully updated. Instead, I added a note right at the top that says that some users may get a new experience until we decided whether to move forward with this new experience or not.
The only workaround for now would be to include in your default branch a basic .circleci/config.yml file. This will signal to CircleCI that it should not automatically create a .circleci/config.yml when you click the “Set up project” button. You should be able to trigger pipelines on pushes to your “initial” branch…that sounds like a bug could you send me a link to your pipelines page so I can take a look? sebastian @ circleci.com is my email.
I will also note that I am actively evaluating the efficacy of this new experience for new projects created by existing users and there is a good chance that it is rolled back until we have a more flexible option. I’ll let you know when there are any updates.