Yeah, seems like this is just ignorance around .vsconfig files. Makes life way easier. You can also just use the VS Build Tools exe to install things instead of the full VS installer, if you plan to use a different IDE.

Can you use .vsconfig to tell Build Tools what your project needs?

Can you generate .vsconfig with Build Tools?

You pass in the --config param to import it.

Exporting this way might be possible but it wouldn't be as useful seeing as it would just grab everything you have installed instead of some minimal set used by some project.