This makes me wonder if you might benefit from exploring more programming languages.
I've never found shell scripts (beyond the most trivial tasks) to be especially readable. Bourne-style shells in particular (e.g. bash) have a lot of easy-to-miss nuances that will lead to bugs if not carefully managed.
Hats off to you if you can do a good job of it, but it sounds to me like a recipe for pain when it comes to long-term maintenance.