So, I use steem-js for all my work and it does the job reasonably well. None of this requires any major resources so I'm running on a super basic server. There are a ton of great posts about steem-js and you can find examples of nearly anything to get started.
I definitely want to open source at least some of what I'm doing, but that's a clear roadmap to avoid me so I'm giving that some thought on how best to proceed.