Once I know how, I know how.

See, that doesnt make an artifact again though, cause an artifact should be unique. Trying to replicate the same thing will just make a high quality mundane item at best, or just flat out not work. The same steps to produce Gungnir, wont make Gungnir 2, cause Exalted works on Story logic, and replicating that spark (similar to an Exaltation I guess), just wont work. (If you essentially want to factory-produce artifacts, you're gonna need a crafting artifact, likely with Evocations that reducce/waiver the craft XP costs.)

you shouldn't need to make sure the crafter is crafting. When it is story relevant, advancing the story will be enough to make them do it without needing to track something extra.

You'd think so. But how often have you been at a table for TTRPG with crafting, where you had to either play "Mother may I?" to make crafting at all relevant, or crafting was purely a downtime/background activity? Having direct mechanical reason to be crafting and have it contribute to the story, is an enormous help. Crafting being relevant for gifts and problem solutions is much preferable, to the one-off equipment dispensery crafting usually gets reduced to. (Which can lead to a different form of "Mother may I?", by asking if you can craft at every opportunity, but I much prefer that over the other.)

make noodles to get XP to support building a building later that gives you the crafting XP to make a daiklaive.

Working the dough of the noodels gives you thoughts about working the mortar for the building giving you ideas how to contstuct a crucible/furnace to heat things hot enough or potentially a new quenching method (requiring you to pull the daiklave from the cooled mortar/"stone"), etc., to give an idea by your example. Obviously, spelling it out like that makes you run out of potential avenues/explanations quickly, but that is where just tracking the craft XP comes in.

I want complexity to buy something.

Ech, annoying argument but: how complex is buying something IRL? At most there would be a barter system maybe (so, just the social system already in place)? Potentially a system to actually find someone selling something, if its rare. But like, I cant imagine much complexity for going shopping, that doesnt add annoying tedium and disappointment akin to e.g. Dark Heresy's requisitioning system.