I bought a pair of Korg NanoKontrols that I eventually intend to hack into pedalboard type controllers for myself and my bassist. I've got it pretty well mapped out for my rig, and it works well enough, except that as is it's not super intuitive or easy to navigate.
For this, I use a set of JS plugins that help to translate and connect the MIDI messages from the controller to the plugins they are meant to control. I prefer to avoid the control path altogether, and have "special needs"
, so it's maybe more complicated than it needs to be.
The thing is, though, that it would be relatively easy to build a "preset manager" plugin in JS would take a single midi note or program change and translate it to a set of parameter automation actions which is what you originally said you wanted. It would take some thinking to make it "easy" and "user friendly", but I know it could be (maybe has been?) done.