And there's very few investment points below it.

You can cobble together your own unique special combination of services to run apps on! It's an open ended adventure into itself!

I'm all for folks doing less, if it makes sense! But there's basically nothing except slapping together the bits yourself & convincing yourself your unique home-made system is fine. You'll be going it alone, & figuring out on the fly, all to save yourself from getting good at the one effort that has a broad community, practitioners, and massive extensibility via CRD & operators.