As I understand it, when you use cy.request() to make an HTTP request, Cypress actually uses an instance of XMLHttpRequest under the hood to make the request. And when Cypress detects that an instance of XMLHttpRequest has been created by cy.request(), it intercepts that instance of XMLHttpRequest and modifies it. so that it can track the request and response, and display it in the Cypress test runner. This is why you see the "green non-filled circle" in the test runner when using cy.request(), even though you have not explicitly used cy.intercept().