Neil,

You could use transient[1], the tool used to build the menus of magit[2].
I really like magit's discoverability and ease of use.

There is a video of a talk where it is used to control kubernetes from
inside emacs in magit style:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3krYEeqnyk

[1] transient: https://github.com/magit/transient
[2] magit: https://magit.vc


On Wed, Sep 11, 2019 at 2:17 AM Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl> wrote:

>
> On 2019-09-11, at 01:11, John Kitchin <jkitchin@andrew.cmu.edu> wrote:
>
> > This sounds like an interesting application with a lot of complexities.
> > It definitely blurs the lines between a database where you could run
> > queries to find/update records, and a human readable, structured data
> > file that also does this.
>
> This reminds me of this:
> https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2012/01/06/how-trello-is-different/
>
> I just had a minor enlightenment why Org-mode is so successful (within
> its niche, of course).  It implements a bunch of very general data
> structures - a tree, a table, a dictionary - and a few slightly more
> specific - a clock table, TODOs/tags, markup...
>
> Best,
>
> --
> Marcin Borkowski
> http://mbork.pl
>
>