Good news, I got my mojo back.
We parked the problematic changes into the 2.x branch and made the 1.3 line to new main branch. Many days (and nights) of backporting the good parts into 1.3 were in hindsight well spent. A lot work but I'm happy I did it.
Next. Landing my mapped root path changes and the config API into 1.4.
Now packing for ScalaDays Berlin and finding some sleep.