For this I'd highly recommend either the NanoKVM or an Intel machine that has AMT support (and a cheap wifi outlet for when things get truly borked)
Edit: PXE and kexec() are also friends :)
I had some zigbee outlets laying around but wasn't interested in doing the config work to give Claude access to my mqtt broker. I already had most of the kernel written by hand years ago, so PXE etc were irrelevant, the goal was to see how well driver work would go. I was able to send relocatable elf binaries over serial and use the existing modular machinery in my kernel to have it load and run them.
Janky setup with two ESPs for the serial terminal and to control a servo taped to some microswitches to power cycle the board.
It worked very well, allowing Claude to spend all day and night debugging quirks with the NIC until it was able to get the driver working.
So, I think giving your IoT device some "hands" is probably worth it. For SD card automation, you can find "wireless SD cards" on Amazon/AliExpress that have a microcontroller pretending to be sd card, eg FYSETC SD-Wifi.