my goals for my dots were always the following: 1.) as few dependencies as possible (bloat-free) 2.) desktop friendly 3.) minimal terminal usage where possible 4.) make it look nice
the idea of being desktop friendly (for me) really just means "can i use it exclusively with a mouse"? sometimes you just want to kick your feet up and use your primary hand to navigate your system only. right click the top-right corner of an app to close it, run a system update and toggle workspaces all from your mouse. every possible system command or toggle you want can be found with the mouse. don't worry, everything has a keybind as well if you want.
your system settings are pretty much all managed either through custom shell scripts or TUI-based packages. the terminal should be used as little as possible ideally so all major settings, daemon-reloads and more are found in the system menu. there are times where i flat out just don't open up a terminal at all.
the theme engine helps blend everything all together, giving each theme a unique color palette that applies to many packages due to the TUI nature of the dots.
if you're interested, the dots are here.