vscode-yaml VS nickel-nix

What I'm missing in Nickel is schema validation. With JSON schemas, you can specify exactly what shape the configuration file should have, and provide autocompletion and error highlighting in an editor. JSON schemas can also be used for toml and yaml.

Install any kubernetes yaml validator in your vscode https://github.com/redhat-developer/vscode-yaml

Have a K8yaml schemaset to K8's in your editor. Something like this makes the process so smooth.

Have you tried https://github.com/nickel-lang/nickel-nix ?

I didn't use it yet, but looks like this supposed to do it.

These days those aren't the only options; you can also use Nickel: https://github.com/nickel-lang/nickel-nix

Which isn't fully baked, no, but here's hoping.

One target-use case of Nickel is to be used as an alternative front-end for Nix (instead of Nix expressions). There is a draft RFC and a repository to use Nickel to write development shell (Nixel). The goal is that, one day, you can actually just transparently call to Nix code and into Nixpkgs. Until then, I totally understand that nothing can be the power of levering Nixpkgs... so your approach makes sense :)

Undecided; see https://github.com/nickel-lang/nickel-nix for a proof-of-concept of an integration that requires making no changes to either Nickel or Nix.