winstall VS winget-cli-restsource

https://winstall.app. There's also winget.run, but it's no longer updated.

What I'm thinking now is you may just want to solve this with the nuclear option like this guy did - https://old.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/f4tw3k/cannot_open_any_microsoft_store_apps_windows/ A pain in the ass, but most 3rd-party applications can export settings, and a program like Patch My PC or winstall can reinstall software quickly. https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/1950-clean-install-windows-10-a.html

As a happy Winget user: https://winstall.app/

Here's a front end someone made to easily browse it: https://winstall.app/

You can replicate that experience with winstall. It gives you the script file when you finish selecting the desired packages, so you can install all the desired apps on any Windows machines on one go without installing additional software.

you have that usb installer for windows you just made. there's still some room on it. make a new folder there and stuff your initial batch of application installers in it, or at least something like ninite or patchmypc or a script made from winstall.app

Winstall

There is a way to point it to custom repositories, here's the documentation for that. They even have a repo with a template for hosting your own rest source here.

You can also stand up a private source. We have a reference implementation at https://github.com/microsoft/winget-cli-restsource. It's a bit tough to deploy presently, but we're making investments there. A PR is in progress with some PowerShell to make it easier to deploy.

Last but not least, They also released a reference implementation for the REST API source so you can host your private repository. This is a new type of source for the Windows Package Manager. The default source is a “PreIndexed” Package delivered via the Microsoft Store, but now you may add additional REST-based sources if they properly implement the JSON-based REST API schema.