[scruffian]

This demonstrates how Gutenberg PR #85402, can help us to implement simpler themes.

• index.html becomes the theme's shell — the header part, the shared main wrapper holding a core/post-content slot, and the footer part
• the seven other templates carry only what is particular to them
• Each names the template it is rendered inside in the new templates section of theme.json, so the header and the footer live in one template instead of being repeated in eight.
• Five of the seven compose to a block-for-block identical tree and render exactly as they did before; 404 and page-no-title adopt the shared main wrapper, so they lose their own padding and their zero top margin respectively.

This relies on the templates section of theme.json and the template_include substitution added by that Gutenberg PR, neither of which core has, so on plain trunk the theme renders with no header and no footer.

Trac ticket: none. This is a companion to Gutenberg PR #85402, opened for review alongside it, and is not proposed for core as it stands.

Use of AI Tools

AI assistance: Yes
Tool(s): Claude Code
Model(s): Claude Opus 5
Used for: The template and theme.json changes, and a throwaway harness that verified the composed block trees against trunk. Directed and reviewed by me.

---

This Pull Request is for code review only. Please keep all other discussion in the Trac ticket. Do not merge this Pull Request. See GitHub Pull Requests for Code Review in the Core Handbook for more details.

[github-actions]

The following accounts have interacted with this PR and/or linked issues. I will continue to update these lists as activity occurs.

Core Committers: Use this line as a base for the props when committing in SVN:

Props scruffian.

To understand the WordPress project's expectations around crediting contributors, please review the Contributor Attribution page in the Core Handbook.

---

Props Bot commands

You can trigger Props Bot actions by commenting on this PR:

• @propsbot add <username> to give props to a GitHub user. Requires write access.
• @propsbot remove <username> to leave a user out of the props. Requires write access.
• @propsbot refresh to refresh this list. Adding the props-bot label works too.

[github-actions]

Test using WordPress Playground

The changes in this pull request can previewed and tested using a WordPress Playground instance.

WordPress Playground is an experimental project that creates a full WordPress instance entirely within the browser.

Some things to be aware of

• All changes will be lost when closing a tab with a Playground instance.
• All changes will be lost when refreshing the page.
• A fresh instance is created each time the link below is clicked.
• Every time this pull request is updated, a new ZIP file containing all changes is created. If changes are not reflected in the Playground instance,
  it's possible that the most recent build failed, or has not completed. Check the list of workflow runs to be sure.

For more details about these limitations and more, check out the Limitations page in the WordPress Playground documentation.

Test this pull request with WordPress Playground.