Please don't conflate acknowledging that the ssh implementation is a newly-implemented feature with "discouraging" the use of it. You're better than that.
Wow, this looks great. I've got a talk proposal submitted for DjangoCon this fall and might just integrate this into the presentation, should it get accepted.
jinja2 and mako are supported, and you can even write your own renderer without much effort if a templating language is not supported.
There's even a renderer for pure python, allowing one to write config files in python for more control and flexibility.
One wonders if you've ever actually tried Salt. It really is OK to have an approach of: "I like Chef and it works for me." More power to you. Everyone should use the tool that works for them.
Please don't conflate acknowledging that the ssh implementation is a newly-implemented feature with "discouraging" the use of it. You're better than that.