Defaulting is wrong: what is checked is the aggregate of actual user code, standard library for a given Python version and installed packages. It has to be the same environment as when the program is run, leaving conservative approximations (checking types with the oldest supported library versions and hoping newer ones are OK) to the user.
Yes, if you have a Python version specifed in pyproject.toml, for instance, we respect that, and that's what we use to type-check your code. The default being discussed here is what we fall back on if that project metadata isn't available.
