I haven't seen mention of macOS Automator or AppleScript yet.
15 years ago or so almost everything you wanted to do on a Mac GUI already _was_ scriptable.
Shortcuts is better than nothing, but unsatisfying.
I read this less as a fumble and more as a frustrating sign of the times. Automation is not powerful because powerful automation is a maintenance and malfeasance liability only valued by a tiny minority.
Shortcuts on the desktop can run shell commands or Applescript. You can send a limited number of things to Apple Intelligence in it already too. I still rarely use it. There's probably good things I could codify (like search all my Mail and Calendar events for a given string), but the reality is most stuff I don't do on a regular basis, and a natural language request to go do something would be a lot easier.