Does init --vars work?

[pnadolny13]

I see this helper from dbt init --help:

  --vars YAML                     Supply variables to the project. This
                                  argument overrides variables defined in your
                                  dbt_project.yml file. This argument should
                                  be a YAML string, eg. '{my_variable:
                                  my_value}'

but if I want to run something like dbt init --vars '{profile: arch}' --skip-profile-setup to skip profile setup since I have it defined elsewhere and the path set in my env vars, it doesnt seem to do anything. Am I using it correctly?