I feel that raw code is simpler to work with, more flexible and more ubiquitous (at least for bash).
FWiW the comments look fine to me and I've just [vouch]'d each and every one .. if some one else or two does the same they should come back.
With just a little bit of effort, shell scripting really isn’t that arcane.
It isn't, but at least bash and posix shell don't really have scoping, structured variables, or reliable error handling (too many ways an error code can be invisibly dropped)
To get them, you need to use a less used shell like hush or powershell. And one reason those haven't taken over, is that if you have to add a dependency you might as well use a full language anyway. But I agree that YAML isn't a good option for scripting either