Its a full linux os, so you can do literally anything that can be done with existing tooling. For example, I have syncthing installed on mine so i just have to drop files into a folder on another computer of mine and they show up.
The software folks have put together a decent experience in the last few years and its rather nice out of the box.
Stack overflow now with the sponsored crypto blogspam Joining forces: How Web2 and Web3 developers can build together
I really love the byline here. "Kindest view of one another". Seething rage at the bullshittery these "web3" fuckheads keep producing certainly isn't kind for sure.
This reminds me of when I was planning out a tubular bells project. there is an amount of crankery around various notes and I came across a series of videos about the various Cs and their use in healing or chakra alignment.
When i went to buy some tuning forks I noted some more weird mysticism, but hey at least they produced a nice set of C notes.
I think the gap you have is in understanding that Podman Compose was meant to line up with the limitations of docker's compose, but technically is more capable.
Quadlet files let you do more complex workflows like deploying multiple copies of a service in your deployment that regular compose doesn't, while not running full kube.
The use I have is that I have something deployed in compose right now that I'd like to scale up on the box since i have the capacity for it, but dont want to deal with a full kube setup or the politic
Personally I've converted most of my single node k3s to using quadlet files instead as its less fragile. I absolutely deploy single containers in the quadlet. They show up in journalctl and the ergonomics are great.
Kate has excellent lsp support nowadays as well.