Just to point out the obvious, but Topic List Previews Theme Component - theme - Discourse Meta (in combo with the sidecar plugin) already provides liking from the Topic List. Not only that but it supports bookmarking from the Topic List too. Both have been supported for years. You can see both in action here.
I know you are concerned about stability, but actually TLP TC has been very stable over the last year.
And in terms of support, you can switch between the components very easily if TLP TC was ever to have a critical issue outside of our free support period. Can’t remember the last time though … and because I use this component myself it gets pretty speedy fixes.
You also have the option of running a staging environment to pre-check upgrades to be really risk averse.