In some ways that may be better but its early days so its actually somewhat similar so far.
“Talking with” the team somewhat actively is still not direct involvement.
And its still a little unclear where this relationship even came from. Like did the (at the time) 1-month old tool just get posted, and liked immediately?
Anyways a sort of informal communication between a detached person and the real team would have been the case with pamac as well. Eventually you had a few commits from others but they were minimal like version name bumps. Otherwise the main dev came from a single unrelated person and then when they, for example, went back to university, then any glaring issues with pamac would go unfixed for months.
It could very well be that shelly ends up in the same kind of situation. Maybe not.
I guess I just wonder about a few of these things.
Initially I was mainly responding to the idea of ‘not doing the same thing’ because frankly, as I have said elsewhere, this has a sort of ominously similar feeling to me.
I will continue to use and suggest what I know to use and suggest.
We may just end up with the ‘official’ manager being Shelly while experienced users in the forum advise something different. Which is still where manjaro+pamac are at I think. 
Or maybe I will be surprised and shelly will be great for everyone. I suppose thats possible too.