I strongly recommend checking out TensorFlow-Slim if you're looking for a lightweight abstraction for using TensorFlow – at least the layers, anyway.

The API looks similar to something like Keras or Lasagne, but the layers are just simple operations on tensors, so it integrates seamlessly with vanilla TensorFlow in a way that something like TF-Keras won't.

At the same time, though, the layers are the same foundation that TF-Keras look like they'll use, so you get much of the same expressive power, but without sacrificing flexibility.