sway (and i3 at work as I'm forced to use X, although this pales in comparison to the author's dire situation) are perfect. I've written several simple text based blocks for i3blocks that makes my DE somehow more functional than the bloated ones. It's just so great getting exactly what you want because you write/compose it yourself (yes, I use emacs).

Stumpwm is also very attractive. Less "Unixy" but more Lispy which is a different approach at getting exactly what you want.