I have noticed this happens quite often, I know that I don’t know all the hotkeys which is part of the reason why this occurs but it just seems strange that Ardour does not seem to recognize focus of windows.
Meaning if a window has focus, having only keyboard hotkeys apply to that specific window that is focused.
With certain features / hotkeys of course this is beneficial and they should be allowed but some can get confusing. Many times I am viewing a window that is in focus and I am trying out common expected keyboard hotkeys to navigate in that focused window and constantly I see things being altered in the background.
EXAMPLE
I have quite a few examples but I will just give one for now.
Keyboard Shortcuts Window
(I know this one is NOT the best example because this window is ready to accept hotkey presses, but it does prove my point in certain cases.)
If you open up this window, user sees tabs at the top so tries using the standard “Ctrl+Page Up / Down” hotkeys to navigate through these tabs.
Even though this window is in focus, you will notice instead of doing something in this window, it actually starts scrolling through Ardour component screens in the background, cycling through Edit / Mix / etc. buttons.
Also if user tries arrow keys up / down if the Edit screen of Ardour is open in the background you will start to see the track list moving up and down in the background.
Generally my request posts haven’t been too successful so far, if this post is taken seriously and is considered to be corrected, I might be able to help with providing more use case scenario examples in which similar things occur, if the assistance is needed.
Again I don’t know all the functionality and hotkeys of Ardour, so many items I am sure are done for reasons I am unaware of, but I can still point them out just in case.
Only good thing about this is that I didn’t know about this cycling hotkey and I like it 
Thank You