shopify app deploy blocked by phantom [events]: Required — Partner Dashboard shows no Events feature enabled

CLI version: reproduced identically on 4.7.0, 4.6.1, 4.0.0, and 3.94.3

Problem

shopify app deploy (and shopify app config validate) fails with:

[events]: Required

even though shopify.app.toml has no [events] section and never has. I checked the Partner Dashboard for this app — there's no mention of "Events" / "Next-Gen Events" anywhere, no toggle, nothing to enable or configure.

Steps to reproduce

1. Have an existing app with a shopify.app.toml that has never used [events] (just a plain [webhooks] section with api_version set, no subscriptions).
2. Run shopify app config validate (or shopify app deploy).
3. Observe:

   ╭─ error ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
   │                                                                              │
   │  Validation errors found.                                                    │
   │                                                                              │
   │  • [events]: Required                                                        │
   │                                                                              │
   ╰──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
   

What I tried

1. Confirmed it's not a local-CLI-version issue — reproduced the identical error on @shopify/cli 4.7.0, 4.6.1, 4.0.0, and 3.94.3 (full major-version spread) via npx @shopify/cli@<version> app config validate. Since the required-field set differs across those releases, this points to the check coming from the Partners backend, not code bundled in the CLI.
2. Added a minimal [events] block to shopify.app.toml:

   [events]
   api_version = "2026-07"
   

   This flips to two contradictory errors:

   [events.subscription]: Required
   Unsupported section(s) in app configuration: events
   

   So the backend simultaneously demands the section and rejects it as unsupported for this app — no toml content can satisfy both at once.

Expected behavior

shopify app deploy should succeed without requiring a section for a feature that isn't enabled for the app/org, or the error message should point at what actually needs enabling instead of a self-contradictory pair of validation errors.

Context

• App has an existing, working [webhooks] section (api_version set, no subscriptions configured yet).
• Partner Dashboard shows no "Events" (developer preview) toggle or notice for this app.

Start by reproducing the failure with shopify app config validate and shopify app deploy using a shopify.app.toml containing only [webhooks]. Trace the configuration validation entry points and the Partner Dashboard response; done means an app without Events enabled no longer receives the contradictory [events] errors, or the message identifies the required enablement step.