while recognising that different people will have drastically different requirements for the publish ui - a proposed middle-ground
Use case or problem
the publish ui is problematic beond trivial use - specifically, it lacks search and filters to manage files
hypothetical 2k files, 5 devices. a short-term need to give access to 100-200 at a time, while aspects of insight are refined.
manually modifying files for inclusion is inconvenient. and hits sync across all devices. which also impacts general use - a need to wait for unnecessary files to synchronise before necessary changes appear
Proposed solution
a quick (?) solution might be to expose a config whitelist for files to publish.
other means can be used to compile that list - existing search or dataview, for example.
bonus points for accepting list markdown. 
many thanks