It’s a solved problem! Try https://containers.dev/
Artists can just clone the repo and open your project with a supported editor(like VSCode). Done. You can write a config that says what base OS, install packages, and install VSCode extensions (via VSCode workspace settings).
Many projects use this setup and it has been magical.
Is there a project that acts like a registry? It can proxy the request with TTL, and you can push images to it too?