Wait, without the -D switch? I didn't enable any -D switch. Hmm.... Honestly, I'm not one who discourages cheating, but I'll look into it and fix it in the spirit of learning how to do a proper release in Inform.
Ahhh... I found it. I'm using plugins in VSCode, and I see now that the "build and run" is set to -D by default and the hover text says, "[Alt]" will compile for release. Always learning...