Question about anchors/references, decluttering card, etc

I am trying to make things easier for myself and I am decent at yaml (but not desiring to go full yaml/raw config editor yet.)

What are my options for doing this then mainly by reusing code using anchors and aliases?

For instance, I have a generic “room card” I want to use that is based off BubbleCard popups. It would be a vertical stack with a bubblecard popup, then other cards (right now a banner card with door/window entities, then some other bubblecards.)

The issue I am facing is that obviously the card itself is not identical between all rooms (ie. some rooms have 2-3 windows, 1 door, others have 1 window, no tracked door, etc. etc.) So I could use an anchor to define a simple template then merge additional info in. Or I can set up a bubblecard anchor for my lights (so it is same same across many rooms) but those each would need separate sub-buttons (since the number of lights varies across the rooms, etc.)

Is there any real way to use this without going full raw config mode?

  1. Declutter card- seems very nice but (and this is not a slight) basic. It can define cards that can work across your instance but they must basically be the same. There is no pick and choose config and merging of different info if I am looking at it right.

  2. lovelace-gen - Seems pretty in depth and could maybe work but requires yaml mode and at that point I think I could define the anchors and such myself anyhow.

  3. Raw config- basically a step I just don’t want to take at the moment. I do edit in yaml a bit but it’s nice to have the visual editor there at times.

My main goal restated is to make things the same across many cards without having to change it in a million places when I decide to update something. I think we all like DRY here but I’m just not entirely sure if what I’m asking is doable with the current tools without going full yaml mode.

Lovelace_gen is probably the best solution, but it takes a bit of work to make the change and the first configuration of a card/page can be a bit frustrating.
The end result is wonderful though.

The lack of GUI is not that big, because you can still preview the work in the normal HA dashboard.
At times you might mess it so much up that the HA dashboard do not load, but you know what section you are working on, so it is just a question about reverting that or ripping it out and start over with that part.

I tried YAML anchors first, but I found way too many limitations with it when you want to make the content more dynamic.

Unclear what you mean.
Of course a decluttering card has it’s limitations like this:
Assume a decluttering card represents a stack (or a picture-elements). Then you may pass a list of cards (elements) as a variable. Or you may pass ONE card (element) to fill “one cell” in this stack, other “cells” may be default (which can also be overridden by variables). BUT - you cannot add a few cards (elements) as a list to be merged with a default list.

Consider UI editor for “designing”, yaml-mode for maintaining. Means - create a card/view in UI, then paste it into yaml & re-use common parts.

I would use it for dynamic content (not covered by auto-entities) only.