> Don't forget this is a text editor, not [a] general purpose automation harness

This arguable. I personally use emacs for text editing for sure, but not only: it also does emails (notmuch), git (magit), team & project management (org), mastodon, fleet management (nix + colmena + custom elisp functions), and, more importantly, all these “applications” can mutually share data.

So can you use emacs as a text editor only? Sure. Can you leverage its intrinsic abilities to reach what might be called an automation harness? Yes as well.