Sounds like he missed Netlify CMS. It's the best of both worlds; a nice simple CMS experience that builds on top of the elegance of static publishing.
I tried Netlify CMS and found it to be clunky and unpleasant to use. Lots of time spent waiting for Git commits and images were a pain to set up and manage as well.
Maybe it's better now but, even if it was an amazing experience, it still can't provide the level of integration I want/need.