I was looking at similar projects and came across N-O-D-E’s ZeroTerminal. In this, he uses i3 as the WM and uses text-based applications exclusively. It may be a good idea to review this for a future revision of the DevTerm. The default DE for the DevTerm is some GTK-based system, and doesn’t come with a lot of programs anyway. In-fact, it appears that there are no custom modifications to the Armbian system with the exception of the creation of the user cpi and its default password. A system with i3 as well as excluisive-TUI is probably superior, but the keyboard that came with my A04 would be more difficult to use for it.
https://n-o-d-e.net/zeroterminal3.html
The image is from the second edition of his Zine, btw.