In Implicit Anchor Elements it says
...
The implicit anchor element of a pseudo-element is its originating element, unless otherwise specified.
Finding an Anchor then says
-
If anchor spec was not passed, return the default anchor element if it exists, otherwise return nothing.
-
If anchor spec is auto:
- If the Popover API defines an implicit anchor element for query el which is an acceptable anchor element for query el, return that element.
- Otherwise, return nothing.
...
It seems that given a pseudo element this would return its originating element in step 1 if the default anchor was auto (i.e position-anchor: auto and no anchor spec).
However, if the anchor spec is auto (step 2), then it only returns an implicit anchor for a Popover API and not for pseudo elements, so it would return nothing.
It wasn't clear to me if this is intentional or an oversight.
@tabatkins @fantasai