Makes sense, matches with my experience. For those who mean this by "trunk-based development" -- and I'm not sure everyone in this thread, including OP, does -

Makes sense, matches with my experience. For those who mean this by "trunk-based development" -- and I'm not sure everyone in this thread, including OP, does -- I think it would be clearer to just say "avoid long-running branches", instead of calling that a new method "trunk-based development". But either way, yeah, what you say matches my experience and the consensus on best practice in communities/teams I have worked on already. I didn't really realize this was not universal, is perhaps my confusion! But I am still not sure if simply avoiding long-running branches is what OP was describing!