I wrote my own program, filetailor. It’s similar to Chezmoi but uses inline comments instead of templates for machine-specific lines. This allows me to make edits directly to my local files and then sync those changes to other machines.

I also use Ansible.

I just moved from Neovim to Helix. I think it’s worth considering, especially if you don’t know the keybindings yet. Plus, Helix is probably easier to learn.

Interesting idea. If you really break it down, the “terminal with command buttons” is similar in concept to saving each of the commands as a script and putting those scripts in a directory to act as “buttons.”

I’ve also seen some programs such as Kopia, a backup tool, that provide a GUI with the equivalent terminal commands for what is bring done shown at the bottom.

I don’t think what you’re describing exists, probably because experts don’t need it and beginners would prefer a full GUI.

There is Nushell, which promises more helpful error responses for the terminal, but its too early for it to be targeted at beginners in my opinion.