I've done something like this when bootstrapping a system that would eventually have an API with proper admin tools, but we just need something quick-and-dirty

I've done something like this when bootstrapping a system that would eventually have an API with proper admin tools, but we just need something quick-and-dirty to get off the ground. So I wrote some scripts in bash to do things the "worst" way possible. Directly accessing the production DB, minimal safety checks, etc. Nobody else on the team liked writing bash, so there was no fight to replace these awful tools with proper APIs.