Yep. Like many here I appreciate the idea of Home Assistant, but the abstraction on top of abstraction is a little disappointing, and seems like too much for someone who's pretty comfortable shell scripting..
..so yes, thats kind of what I'm fishing for. Is anyone aware of something a little more shell-oriented?
You can try pyscript (https://github.com/custom-components/pyscript), which allows you to write automations in plain Python.