I believe by default, the bot will not “start” (as in run the action_session_start) the conversation in rasa shell unless you explicitly send a message /session_start. Sessions don’t begin unless Rasa is receives an event.
In the docs you’ll see that there’s no proactive action that Rasa takes, unless triggered by an external event, so you won’t see the bot do anything in rasa shell until you send a message or send the slash command /session_start. It might be a good idea for this to be added as a behavior in a PR!
Let me know if that’s confusing!