There are already successful lower-level tools than Zapier, though.
Look at IBM's NodeRed platform, for instance. More importantly, go look at the user-contributed examples and use cases. It runs in all sorts of small custom implementations, like home one-off home security systems and small town public utility monitoring setups.
You just don't see those because they don't have a reason to publish their stuff on Github or write a Medium post and link it on HN.
I assure you that anyone who is proficient with Zapier could be graduated to handling raw APIs, direct database transactions, and rendering the output with modern javascript frameworks in a few days, tops.
Look at IBM's NodeRed platform, for instance. More importantly, go look at the user-contributed examples and use cases. It runs in all sorts of small custom implementations, like home one-off home security systems and small town public utility monitoring setups.
You just don't see those because they don't have a reason to publish their stuff on Github or write a Medium post and link it on HN.
I assure you that anyone who is proficient with Zapier could be graduated to handling raw APIs, direct database transactions, and rendering the output with modern javascript frameworks in a few days, tops.