Thanks for the feedback, I will incorporate those suggestions as I work through a few other details.
Regarding Petalinux, it really is quite an invasive tool set. Unlike the one you suggested, kas, Petalinux almost tries to completely mask Yocto and bitbake. So the command petalinux-config actually generates it’s own config files which are then used to generate input files to bitbake when you run petalinux-build. This is one of the main reasons for the suggestion to avoid Petalinux.
I am realizing my instructions above do require some knowledge of Petalinux to make it work. I will try add more details to the setup to make that a bit easier.