> I also suspect there’s a fairly finite number of sane join primitives, you can have rabbets, dados, dominos, dovetails, pocket screws, etc. These could be experimented with digitally against an existing design. And your tool availability could determine what you can do.

> And of course cut order and assembly is just a DAG and can be generated from geometric constraints of the actual design.

That's exactly it! It's a well-constrained space, and some amazing utility falls out as a consequence of using real-world materials and operations instead of cad-native primitives.