<p>I've grokked the code for all the aforementioned apps and I still can't find a straightforward way to create a static directory structure from a single command.</p>

So what you want is to able to issue a command that will generate an entire directory tree?
```
```
cp -r <template> <destination>
```
```
Or am I misunderstanding?  If you want to generate a consistent directory structure, your best bet is to simply copy it from a template.  Fast, easy, done.