[meowface]

This sounds like basically what I use READMEs or supplementary Markdown documentation files for, just in a bash code block in a Markdown file rather than in a bash file.

[peterbell_nyc]

The difference is that every time you do the process, you can consider writing a couple of tests and automating the step.

[meowface]

That's true. I guess I tend to just use those as examples/documentation at the start, and then when I want to automate the process, I do it more in an all-at-once way (with a Python project or something) rather than incremental additions to a bash script. Do-nothing scripting does definitely sound like a technique I should try out. I'm not a huge fan of bash for stuff beyond a list of short commands/steps, though.