I'm pretty interested in a Stream Deck or similar, but I have a Kinesis Freestyle Pro, with 8 hotkeys and a lot of programmability -- so I resolved to really get into it with them. Using xdotool, bash scripts, linux key binding to get the same results.
The Freestyle has individually-programmable full-color key LEDs as well, so I'd like to get into that, reproducing a lot of the functionality of an LCD screen on the buttons, as far as state changes.