I am not sure if I get your point. First you reduce everything to Frames, then you say reducing it to just a few blocks is wrong.
And if you'd seen my final crawler, you'd agree that the 5 blocks were enough. Ok add chests for storage and I think I forgot about the deployer, but that's it. No redwire, a timer + delay was the total "tons of circuits", no cables, no enderchest, no Thermopiles, no chunkloader. But to be honest: this wasn't the first one I build, more like the 20th one, and the previous did include a lot of stuff that turned out to be not required in the end. It is all about researching the most efficient setup like someone in this thread said before.
And with that perfect transition, back to the initial topic.