I had some unexpected behavior (updates were being downloaded and not applied) on a system and it looks like it came down to having both /etc/dnf/automatic.conf and /etc/dnf/dnf5-plugins/automatic.conf

/usr/share/dnf5/dnf5-plugins/automatic.conf only talks about /etc/dnf/dnf5-plugins/automatic.conf.

# This configuration file is managed by the dnf5-plugin-automatic package.
# Please do not edit it. To make changes in dnf5 automatic configuration
# edit /etc/dnf/dnf5-plugins/automatic.conf and make your adjustments there.

https://github.com/rpm-software-management/dnf5/blob/main/dnf5-plugins/automatic_plugin/config/usr/share/dnf5/dnf5-plugins/automatic.conf#L3

Meanwhile the man page only talks about /etc/dnf/automatic.conf

The operation of the tool is controlled by configuration files. Default values are set from ``/usr/share/dnf5/dnf5-plugins/automatic.conf`` config file. Host-specific overrides from ``/etc/dnf/automatic.conf`` are then applied.

https://github.com/rpm-software-management/dnf5/blob/main/doc/dnf5_plugins/automatic.8.rst?plain=1#L36

On some freshly installed systems I copied /usr/share/dnf5/dnf5-plugins/automatic.conf to /etc/dnf/dnf5-plugins/automatic.conf modified it and everything worked fine.

On the problematic one I did an upgrade and am not sure if automatic.conf was left over from dnf 4 automatic or I got my wires crossed reading the docs (I suspect left over since the modify date is April), but either way it led to confusion, as it seems like /etc/dnf/automatic.conf takes precedence over /etc/dnf/dnf5-plugins/automatic.conf.