Search broken without search_api_autocomplete

Hmm, yeah, I agree. The reason it wasn't made optional is that we don't have a great way to provide the option to users within the one recipe, and I think having a separate recipe just for autocomplete would be somewhat odd.

First thing I guess it to determine whether it actually can be provided as an optional add-on, even if it's a separate recipe? In some cases, things can't be split because there is no way to manipulate the config as is necessary.

This isn't only an issue if you uninstall search_api_autocomplete from the recipe, it also prevents configuring search_api + simple_search_form manually, making Drupal CMS essentially incompatible with those modules unless you also use search_api_autocomplete (including via an alternative recipe if one existed). Bumping to critical.