`docker run -d -p 8081:8081 tigrisdata/tigris-local:latest` essentially gives you a local development version of Tigris to play around on your local machine as well as to allow you to build and test your application locally. We have a managed version of this in the cloud that essentially runs the entire platform on Kubernetes.
I am glad to hear that this is similar to what you have thought about building as well. As an application developer in my past life, I have seen so much pain building apps because eventually I end up spending more time on infrastructure and maintenance and less time on my application code. We have built Tigris to solve this by providing you with simple APIs to interface with data without dealing with a separate database system, a separate event storage system, a separate search system, etc.
We didn't go with graphQL because we want a more broad adoption and it seems like HTTP APIs are still the most widely used. At some point though I do envision us having graphQL support.
We are open source so would love your contribution regarding python client library.