This is why we need better tools which will give benefits for the added complexity. If you need to create both the feature files AND the code, it's just complexity with little benefits. But frameworks like https://github.com/karatelabs/karate or https://github.com/Endava/cats are hiding this complexity and remove the code layer entirely. Which, in my view, this is where you need to be in 2023, particularly for API testing.
Congrats on the launch ! I'm the lead dev of Karate[1] and was wondering if you had come across it. I strongly agree with you that collaboration should be via Git and the IDE[2] and that traditional solutions fall short. I hope Karate's syntax passes your "memory friendly" test :) We get regular feedback is that it is easy to read and even non-programmers can pick it up.
One thing I feel we do really well is chaining of HTTP requests. And we have plugins for IntelliJ[3] and Visual Studio Code[4].
Maintaining a tool like this as open-source is a big effort, all the best !
[1] https://github.com/karatelabs/karate
[2] https://www.karatelabs.io/first-class-citizens
[3] https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/19232-karate
[4] https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=karatela...
I recently found a BDD style tool that has native HTTP comprehension, which seems like it hits a similar area in the testing concept space:
Karate is a BDD tool for testing APIs. My experience with it is limited but positive. It’s probably your best option if you want to do BDD.
Other then that I used Python and the requests package, ugly but works great, and Newman the Postman command line utility with some JS test code.