I think it would sort of be like GNU. Stallman created the tools before the kernel because without tools it’s got no value. You need the programs to make this

I think it would sort of be like GNU. Stallman created the tools before the kernel because without tools it’s got no value. You need the programs to make this hypothetical shell useful. That’s structuring the output of pretty much every program as data and passing it through as data conserving types. That’s arguably a very large barrier to entry.