I wrote a proof-of-concept tool, inspired by puppet more than anything, but since it runs locally it is perhaps comparable to ansible too:

https://github.com/skx/marionette/

It turns out that three operations suffice for almost 90% of my needs:

* Populate a file, from a template with variable expansion.

* Run a shell-command.

* Install a package.

I added support for pulling a docker container too, just for fun. Although I never made the effort to pimp/promote it, the tool is stable and useful as-is.