I have something similar to this with my kitchen setup: I have two motion sensors on either end of the island. I have 2 “bright” light fixtures (hooked up via Zooz smart switches – these can be dimmable) and one middle light fixture (smart bulb with the switch left on because the switch is in an awkward spot that I never use anyway).
If motion is triggered and it’s between 5pm - 11pm, turn on all 3. If it’s between 11-4am, just use the dim light. And then after X minutes of inactivity, kill the lights. You could easily add in brightness levels and fades.
I used to have it set to factor in the lesser of sunset or a helper I created (“is it cloudy?”) that read the lux value of my weather station, but in the end I just liked the predictably of set times.
All that to say it would be no problem for you to add dimming based on motion + time of day. Grab the Zooz Dimmer and replace your switches with that and grab whatever regular dimmable light fixtures your wife likes. In your automation set your lights to go on at full brightness during sunset, dim at a specific time, then have it adjust brightness when motion is triggered, and then back to the dim setting after a delay.
You can also set a transition time, so lights on at sunset, transition from 100% to 30% over 3 hours, etc.
Another suggestion: with the HA app on your phone, use that to detect if you’re coming home and turn the lights on full for a few minutes as you pull in.
Yeah. I ran it in docker for years and it was such a hassle compared to HAOS. The switch to VM was best decision I made regarding HA.