I think you just chose a hard way out of habit :) If it were pi-like platform instead of esp, you could just ssh and vi new “gpio …” lines into your crontab (depending on how the lights are connected). I dealt with esp before too and it’s really of “8-bit++” kind, missing all the power of software we built in recent 30 years, so you have to reinvent wheels too often. The only reason these platforms still evolve is they are much cheaper if you plan to ship thousands pcs or make them work in limited environments.