Anyone can produce the template. As a user, I want a thing, so that a benefit. Filling in three blanks takes thirty seconds, and it is entirely possible to fill them in and communicate nothing.
What I have found is that the format is not the value. The format is a prompt that makes you answer three questions you might otherwise skip.
The "who" has to be a real role
"As a user" is usually a sign that the story has not been thought through. Which user? The one who does this forty times a day, or the one who does it twice a year and needs the interface to remind them what everything means? Those two people want genuinely different things, and picking one is a decision.
The "so that" is the only part that survives
The middle clause, what they want, is a proposed solution and it might well change. The last clause is the actual requirement. If the "so that" is missing or circular ("so that I can do the thing I just said"), the story has no reason attached to it, and when someone later proposes a different implementation there is nothing to evaluate it against.
Small enough to be wrong quickly
A story that takes six weeks is not a story, it is a project wearing a story's format. The practical test I use is whether it can be built and shown to someone in a way that lets them tell me it is wrong. If it cannot, it needs splitting, and splitting by user outcome rather than by technical layer, otherwise you get three stories that each deliver nothing on their own.
Done has to mean something specific
Acceptance criteria are where a vague story gets exposed. If I cannot write down what I would check to confirm it works, I do not understand it yet. That includes the boring cases: what happens with no data, bad data, or someone who should not have access.
A story is a placeholder for a conversation
This is the part I keep having to relearn. The story is not a contract handed over the wall. It is a note that says: this is what we discussed, this is why, come back to me when it does not survive contact with reality. The best ones I have written are the ones that made someone come back and tell me about a case I had missed.