Migration Assistant from Time Machine, should I set up disk?

@Niel,

By "link in the first section," I guess you mean the instructions "to restore just a few files…". Those instructions only apply after the Time Machine disk is set up. That's not my situation; if it were, the OS would not be asking whether to set up the disk.

To be clearer, my situation is that I'm setting up a new MacBook, and wish to restore the account contents from my old MacBook, which have been stored on my Time Machine disk. That is, to "migrate," which seems to be the primary purpose of Migration Assistant. I also presume (or hope?) that Migration Assistant will seamlessly inherit my existing Time Machine backup to my new account on my new MacBook. Other ways to duplicate my account to the new computer seem less promising for accomplishing that.

Your final recommendation seems to be that I should not let the OS automatically "set up" the disk. Is that still your recommendation, now that I've made my situation clearer? (Launching Migration Assistant "manually," as you describe, is precisely Step 3 in the linked instructions; my question comes before that step.)

Thank you for very clearly answering my original question. This helps me a lot.

I am still confused about what Migration Assistant can or can't do. These instructions [Transfer your information to Mac from another computer or device - Apple Support] very clearly say that Migration Assistant can be used at times other than during initial setup, to transfer documents or accounts. Which of Migration Assistant's functions are only available during initial setup? And how does one access these setup-only features, considering that the instructions from my original question [Restore your Mac from a backup - Apple Support] require the computer to previously be set up with an account (required to do Step 3) and refer to accounts already being set up on the target Mac (Step 8)?