Yeah I can imagine documentation is definitely a big issue. Also, I am not a fan of ecencies aggressive caching but I get why they do it. The key part I think never leaves the device so you might have to look at that, although it requires the key it encodes that with the timestamp etc etc I think if you use the key directly - I think the hive recipe section or old steem docs somewhere show how if need to use posting auth direct to mimick a login, ideally you just want to force keychain. 

Notifications are now built into the chain aren't they? If you mark your notifications as read go check on hiveblocks it is a customjson operation so with that you at least have direct @ barebones style notifications, although I think that includes all votes above the dust threshold also. 

Obviously I am just spitballing but for everything else I agree, I think without proper docs setting it up and maintaining an install will be a nightmare. Then again it just takes time really. Compare that to building or modifying the condenser? React? or are they both built in react or something? I think Leo is built in Vuejs. 

For your local env I would say use docker if you are not, then if you are looking for a cheap server with plenty of space you can try CONTABO. 

I think the boosters etc or custom token stuff you can possibly reverse engineer, since they mainly rely on burning a token then your part would be tracking the expiration for that? 

Anyway, interested to see what alternative you have to ecency , unless outposts v2 is that alternative?