Reflecting on the OP, After Dark has received very few issues from the community since its release. I’ve been tracking what installations I could easily find via referral traffic sent back to the theme site and have compiled a list of sites using it.
Curious why more issues weren’t being introduced I opened an issue to start collecting feedback and discovered without the automated installation added and described in the OP some users weren’t following instructions anyway, which could become a support issue for some themes and a point of user frustration as attention is limited in this world.
Given the growing number of After Dark sites (current 616 NPM package downloads and ~1500 clones per month) I’m feeling pretty good about the automated installation script simplifying theme setup I’m feeling it may be worth considering blessed themes (those in the theme gallery) should start normalizing and minimizing certain installation steps and the hugo new site subcommand receive update to provide more streamlined Hugo installation theme selection capability. /cc @digitalcraftsman