Only to activate the new kernel! You can just leave the current one running with minimal issues, even less if you have something like KernelCare live patching security bugs
Can’t have grub problems if you don’t have grub. The howto is great, I’ve converted a few machines using it without any (subsequent bootloader-related) issues.
Is there a safe way to do uodates automatically? I could store my password in plaintext and thats barbaric but it still doesnt fix the problem that packages and dependecies can break during updtaes without user input if im right. Tho i guess you could write a script that automatically looks for updates and notifies the user.
The task is objectively unsafe. Both live updates are unsafe and require intervention but also Arch does not guarantee updates require no manual tasks.