Selected theme is ignored in the write flow

[paulopmt1]

Quick summary

When going through the onboarding flow, and selecting the publish a blog goals, we're redirected to the write flow, which is ignoring the selected theme.

Steps to reproduce

See this thread's video: p1736439803072519-slack-C04H4NY6STW

What you expected to happen

To create a site with the selected theme not the pub/poema (default one)

What actually happened

It created a site with the pub/poema theme, ignoring the user selection.

Impact

Most (> 50%)

Available workarounds?

Yes, easy to implement

If the above answer is "Yes...", outline the workaround.

No response

Platform (Simple and/or Atomic)

No response

Logs or notes

No response

[github-actions]

OpenAI suggested the following labels for this issue:

• [Feature Group] Appearance & Themes: The issue relates directly to the theme selection process during site creation.
• [Feature] Design Picker: This feature is involved since it allows users to choose their theme during the onboarding.
• [Feature] Theme Showcase: The problem relates to the theme being shown and selected in the onboarding flow.

[zaguiini]

I managed to reproduce the problem in the account-first version of the flow.

@Automattic/lego, this is probably related to the calypso_onboarding_goals_holdout_20241126 experiment because if I remove the special handling for the write intent after submitting the goals, it applies the design as intended.

I've created a draft PR to demonstrate this: #98186

[arthur791004]

The issue is the exitFlow may be called multiple times. However, we clear the onboard state on the first call so the active theme will be reset to the default theme of the write flow when the function is triggered again.

Proposed #98197 to resolve this issue 🙂