This isn’t exactly an answer, but something like Baserow or NocoDB could be helpful. They’re self hosted versions of Airtable (if you’ve ever used that). Basically it’s a very fancy spreadsheet that can be used to do a ton of custom logic. If you can’t find software that fits your exact needs, chances are you could set something up with one of these! Good luck!

How would I check that?

Yeah seems like sandisk ultra is the way to go. Do you know, is there any disadvantage to using the “Ultra Fit” line of smaller drives that sit much more flush to the case? Those look nice, but IDK if there are performance issues with the smaller package

Yeah, sadly it does have a M.2 slot but it’s not SATA or NVMe, but instead SDIO. Someone out there has actually made an adapter that lets you put an sd card into that slot, which is super cool. But probably no better that a flash drive realistically, and much more expensive (you have to get the adapter manufactured)

Yeah, I have one of those and it’s great but I need very little storage for this system (64g max) so I didn’t feel like it made sense in this case.