I agree that community apps aren’t strictly necessary, but they do provide a lot of convenience for novice users and for anyone who simply wants an easier deployment experience.
The UI-driven configuration forms, selectors, and validation help reduce configuration errors and streamline deployments, so I wouldn’t describe the wrappers as “dumb.”
In some cases, the community apps also include genuine improvements over the vendor’s recommended deployment. For example, when I submitted Seafile to the catalog, I was encouraged to migrate from Redis to Valkey and to use a newer MariaDB release than the one included in the upstream Docker Compose template.
There are a couple of other benefits that I find particularly valuable:
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The ability to use TrueNAS-managed SSL certificates instead of maintaining certificate files separately.
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Having a custom application icon provided through the Apps Catalog. This is especially useful until support for custom icons in custom apps is implemented (https://forums.truenas.com/t/moved-to-roadmap-allow-custom-icons-for-custom-apps/22714).
For experienced users, these advantages may not be compelling. But for many people, especially those new to self-hosting, they make the deployment and maintenance experience significantly smoother.