Animation layers as part of a single action(NLA track)

I know, there are a few feature-requests that tackle the same issue, however I've found none that propose the same solution. The solution I propose is backed up with my experience.

What I propose:

• each action has a toggle in N-panel
• when toggle is on, action gets layers(otherwise - it doesn't)
• each layer is same length as the action
• each layer can be additive/replace/other
• influence can be changed(and animated, but is not animated by default; also can be toggled on-off for ease-of-use)
• order can be changed
• layers(or a group of them) can be baked into one layer
• easily duplicate layer for testing out ideas

Overall, Animation Layers addon has a very good interface in my opinion. Unfortunately, it also has some caveats as I'll explain below.

1. Animation Layers addon works as a substitute for NLA. Meaning, if you use Animation Layers - your NLA usage becomes nigh impossible. Meanwhile, NLA provides neat things: blending actions, cycling small action, putting a small action inbetween a large one, etc.

What I propose is Animation Layers as a sub-NLA. This way you can still fully use NLA, but on some action also(!) use Animation Layers.

2. due to NLA-based nature, Animation Layers addon does not allow for easy action swap. Meaning, if I'm working on a "Walk"-action, I can't simply change it to an "Idle" action to work on that - it'll just change one layer and that's it. To avoid the issue, I have to duplicate rig and model per each action and that brings its own issues. For example, you have to export each animation into own separate file(not a huge issue, but still); it's also troublesome to keep armatures the same when a change is required and you're using something like "rigify" for a gamedev project.

If Animation Layers are instead a part of one action - it would make it easy to swap actions, export a bunch of one action in one file, etc.

3. probably due to NLA nature, sometimes working on an additive layer in Animation Layers addon makes things glitch, as the character stops moving after last keyframe in additive layer(while there are still lots of keyframes in layers below).

Such is my idea of an Animation Layers feature. Of course, there are still gray areas, such as how to make working with both the NLA and Animation Layers intuitive enough, but I hope my insight was helpful.

No matter whether it's done or not, cheers for a bright future for Blender and thank you for all the amazing work that you do on it.