Your use case is exactly what many of us Debian users have been doing for a long time. I use Unstable on my laptop and Stable (+ backports) on my VPS for those exact reasons.
Technically, Debian unstable is close to what I want, but I don't want to be using something that comes with 'at your own risk' warnings day to day.
I think the expectation is the important thing: if an update breaks something, the response I want to see is 'sorry, we'll fix that ASAP and try to avoid doing it again'. I get the impression that Debian unstable (and to a lesser extent testing) is only intended for people who're willing to put up with things breaking often.
Well, yes, it comes with absolutely no guarantees. That said, many Debian developers use it, and breakages have been rare at least for the last few years, since I started using it.
I think the expectation is the important thing: if an update breaks something, the response I want to see is 'sorry, we'll fix that ASAP and try to avoid doing it again'. I get the impression that Debian unstable (and to a lesser extent testing) is only intended for people who're willing to put up with things breaking often.