I mean adaptable. I don't know how much you could automate with Audacity in this regard. With your own code, you can.
Apparently Audacity supports automation from a variety of different languages[1]. Though I’ve not tried myself so I couldn’t comment how good it is. However you’re right that if you’re writing software that depends on such a tool it’s better to have something you can compile into your software (or at least an .so / .dll you can redistribute).
Plus I don’t think it’s fair to say “not anywhere as acceptable as doing it in code yourself”. I understand the point of your disclaimer but as someone who’s been writing code for three decades, I really love the fact that we no longer have to write our own tools.