I am willing to help with this!
As a contributor to SwayWM window manager, I strongly believe rolling our own DE that is user-friendly is doable.
SwayWM has many taskbars like Waybar which also supports systray icons
SwayWM has many start menus but most popular are Wofi, Yofi and bemenu
SwayWM has a screenlock and saver called swaylock
Slightly modifying SwayWM configuration files allows for easy
SwayWM which is based on Wlroots is much more popular than Wayfire and thus more actively maintained.
I am willing to help with this in any way I can. Would you like me to show what packages are needed for these features and to verify if they are available in bookworm, or do you need me to show some configuration files?