Looking at YAML-free Ansible ja Terraform alternatives https://pyinfra.com & https://www.pulumi.com/.
Not having grief over YAML but seems less complicated to go without when starting something from scratch and keeps it more lispy.
@jasalt my personal dream is a bash + ssh based solution. Some useful stuff in here:
https://github.com/epiccastle/spire/tree/master/src/clj/spire/module