PR to get comments/answer questions async

I was reading through this code and some questions came up--both nitpicky little things and larger questions about gaia development and UI approaches. Rather than clutter the main PR with my additional questions, I thought I'd open a PR against my repo, and ask questions here.

Answers much appreciated!

**Edit**: this PR is incredibly huge. My list of questions is also incredibly huge. Maybe this will just be a learning thing for me, rather than something I'd ever expect anyone else to read and respond to :-\

**Edit edit**: I've added `#highlevel` to the questions I think are general enough to merit some attention, so I'll point the authors there when I've finished reading all the code.