Well here I am back… with quite a bit of progress. I have spent about 6.5 hours on this.
I started off with some concepts based on your suggestions, but I had a few drawbacks that ultimately lead me to another direction, but hopefully, in concept a great one still!
I was originally going to use Template Forms, but I was not very pleased with the padding between each in line answer. I was looking for more of a format like my current set. I also was not happy with having to write it all manually in code, which turned me away.
I got my Python script ported to a Discourse Plugin (Please note, AI was used for majority of porting). I had some issues getting started, and now that it is operational, I still need to fine tune it. Design is a little clunky, and prob a few other odds and ends issues. I am not that great with Ruby, so the review there is a best-effort.
So about the plugin…
Concept/purpose: The ability to move topics faster from one category to another by specific triggers.
Comes with two operating modes, which are Manual, and Automated (scheduled).
To build the trigger you can select the to/from categories, and then narrow it down by further specs e.g. tags. the final call/actual trigger aside from the narrowing filters, is triggers the current set of triggers is by ending time/date stamp(or start), Closed, Solved, Archived.
There is also a logs feature including on the topic being moved, and you can decide how long the logs are available.
I have not as of this reply tested the closed, solved or archived triggers entirely.
Once I tidy it up a bit more, and test it further to make sure everything works, I will gladly publish it for others to access in the plugins category, but for now, I will just leave it on GitHub only. I also probably need to go back through and double check permissions so that not just anyone can run it. Or specifically allow that to be toggled.
Feel free to let me know your thoughts, or if I am just absolutely nuts doing this.
Source: https://github.com/jdc20181/DiscourseTopicMigrationTool
