I think there are multiple ways to go forward with this. Though some might require the effort you mention, you don’t have these kinds of resources at your disposal atm. Also IMHO such dedication is only needed once you start really positioning and fostering the larger FSDL ecosystem.
Until that time it may enough to have the broader vision on the horizon and be wary of risks to the various projects that would stray you from the path towards it.
You know me as a passionate advocate for the Fediverse, who spent countless hours promoting the ecosystem in all its breadth and width. With my investigation into the state of the Fediverse I am also an increasingly desperate and worried person about its future outlook.
It is clear to me that the laissez-faire (anarchistic (?)) way that the fedi has evolved on top of the initial standards has brought it in a position now, where it is very hard and challenging to put things into a better state. You might say there’s a metric ton of ‘tech debt’ at protocol / interoperability level in the ecosystem at large. The effort and dedication this requires is likely much larger than doing things upfront.
Forge federation / FSDL are exploring a wholly different set of domains than Microblogging and that provides opportunities to avoid the same pitfalls from the start.
I recently found the IETF Evolvability, Deployability, & Maintainability Working Group that is preparing drafts on maintaining protocols, and I urge people in the forge federation community to at least read the section on Protocol Decay in: The Harmful Consequences of the Robustness Principle
And also look at other documents of this WG, such as: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9170.html
The FSDL is also part of the Social Coding Movement that is yet to be launched. We are discussing challenges to any FOSS ecosystem and Fediverse in particular - and as discussed here - in Social Coding Foundations and I invite you to join the chatroom to keep in the loop.