Thinking of this example https://codepen.io/jaffathecake/pen/VwBprqL

In this case the developer has to manually give each list item a unique view-transition-name. This could be avoided via something like:

.list-item {
  view-transition-name: element-uuid();
}

Where element-uuid() returns a value unique and constant for that DOM node.

The proposal for CSS random() has a per-element value that could be generalised as element-uuid(). #2826 (comment) (cc @tabatkins)

The downside to this is it would only work for same-document transitions, since element-uuid()s will always be different across documents. It also depends on element usage being consistent, which some frameworks don't always get right.

Edit: This would depend on #8319, otherwise styling the resulting pseudos is impossible.