In reply to Andrew.

Based on my experience (and this is mostly anecdotal from other theme authors), users are more likely to expect their front page to show what the theme shows in its screenshot/demo. "Recreating the demo" has long been an issue in the WordPress theme space, particularly with front page designs. Of course, you are aware of this already (just laying out for others who are reading).

I actually do want WordPress to remove the "show on front" setting for block themes (there are other settings too). If the long-term goal is to have more of a unified admin, it makes sense that there is only one place to control something like the front page output. Currently, there are two places without a way to see how these work together.

Even in the scenario where the reading settings are followed, users may still need to hop over to the site editor to make adjustments to what's shown on the front. Essentially, WordPress needs to address the user experience around this, but I think it's OK for themes to start forcing the platform's hand on this.

The site editor is also the promise of Gutenberg from 5 years ago. When trying to bring theme authors on board with blocks, the promise was that we would get to a place where they could just have a front page that was automatically configurable without jumping through all the hoops of the past.

My alternative recommendation is (and I should have mentioned this in the post) for themes to offer the "front page" as a full-page pattern. This will be an even stronger recommendation after 6.0's new page + pattern starting point. This may very well become my go-to response in the future, and it would also solve the other problem:

As far as content vs. templates go, yes, that is also a issue with building templates in general (also one of the reasons I lean into patterns). At least in the case of the "typical" front page, that is often minor content that is likely to be changed based on the theme itself rather than site content. Of course, there are cases on both sides of the spectrum.

Thanks for commenting, Andrew. Great food for thought around things that we all need to figure out. It's discussions like these that we need to shape the future of block themes.