Hmm, you don’t want to write any nix?
If you learn even a basic subset of the nix expression language (nixel) , you’ll unlock the true power of the operating system. 
you may find this post of interest to you.
for more advanced configuration you can fork nixpkgs into your own repo, and build you packages from that, nix doesn’t really care, because in effect your building transparent statically linked ‘containers’. however if any of those ‘containers’ share a library, then it it shared. You can achieve the same effects with nix ‘overlays’ or ‘overrides’.
So, nix is a hybrid linker… pretty neat huh.
Being a gentoo user for many years, i had to rewrite my brain to the nix way. It was worth it, but maybe guix would be more suited to you if you know scheme already?
There is a ton of resources to learn nixel, it’s also sometime a ‘gateway’ drug to functional programming in general… so you never know, you could be committing to nix in a matter of months, a be part of the operating system , you’ll start to rely on yourself for everything…
as you said in your original post ‘with out relying on other devs’… nix can certainly do that. if fact nix can almost do anything, and you can ‘share’ those reproducible results with others…
sometimes, i have to shake myself to the brilliance nix, and tell myself ‘does it really exist?’.
Nix means nothing , so i guess that answers that question is ‘no’.
A ‘flake’ might be the way to go for your problem, you can then have a lot more control.
May the nix be with you,
Always…