I ended up picking hexo [0], as the hexo admin plugin [1] provides a nice localhost CMS/editor that supports image pasting, tag editing etc (could be hosted online too for remote/mobile access, but wouldn't be truly static/server-less at that point).

> but it feels somewhat clunky

Yeah, still feels like there should be _something_ better out there

[0] https://hexo.io/

[1] https://github.com/jaredly/hexo-admin