Why do you want to avoid Home Assistant? From what I've found setting up my automations is that once you have it doing something useful you find you have a lot

Why do you want to avoid Home Assistant? From what I've found setting up my automations is that once you have it doing something useful you find you have a lot of ideas to further make your life better. I might be wrong but I suspect you'll spend a lot of time doing something that is simple in HA only then find you want to do something else similar.