If your non-root user has sudo access, then it should be as easy as making your Ansible playbook log in as the non-root user by default, and then use Ansible's become for anything that needs to run with sudo.

Is there some sort of conflict resolution that happens at re-federation? I'm curious what happens to those unsynced posts/comments.

I really like that "tag as a garage door opener" idea!

I don't have a lot of automations yet, but a really useful one has been using smart plugs to detect when the laundry machines are running so that Home Assistant can send alerts when they finish.