An added complication for anyone following this thread is that it seems that currently, the command line switches for the latest release of ‘create-strapi-app’ are broken.
https://github.com/strapi/strapi/issues/15101
This does show firstly the advantage of very clear and concise docs, I’ve just spent time trying to understand why things were not working ask expected as I try and understand what the docs are trying to explain, in the end, I went and visited the code repo to see if I could find the problem with my script. Secondly - never let anyone set a deadline for R&D work 