## Sidecar Mode Implementation Details

Istio CNI injection is currently based on the same Pod annotations used in init-container/inject mode.

### Selection API

- plugin config "exclude namespaces" applies first
- ambient is enabled if:

### `image: auto` Information

The image used by the chart, `auto`, may be unintuitive.
This exists because the pod spec will be automatically populated at runtime, using the same mechanism as [Sidecar Injection](istio.io/latest/docs/setup/additional-setup/sidecar-injection).
This allows the same configurations and lifecycle to apply to gateways as sidecars.