Ouch! I had a sympathetic shudder at your raster flashback, totally been there. I totally get your visual pattern matching instinct too - spooky cos that's how I do stuff too. Great minds.

For what it's worth, I use duckdb and its spatial stuff as my adapter. Works for my brain and if you force e.g. SQL files for each step, gets there in the same kind of way. Still some sharp edges, mind, but overall working well. And then Claude comes for my maths and I sob.