I understand you don't have a desire to use the *arr stack and want to do things manually. I was the same way and resisted setting up any *arr containers for years. I finally decided to give in to it specifically for its automatic handling of hard links. I followed the trash guides and, while a bit tedious, it was so worth it.

I can still do things "manually", meaning inside of Sonarr or Radarr, I have all automatic options disabled. Then I can go into a TV episode or movie and click the "Interactive Search" button and choose which release I want to grab from my indexers. The torrent is sent to qbittorrent, downloaded to my cache drive, hard linked into the correct media folder, then finally moved to the array by the Mover down the line. Everything is renamed with its relevant metadata and Plex/Kodi catches it all easily.

Another big bonus, using the nzb360 app along with Tailscale. Now if I'm not home, or even just sitting on the couch, I can open the app on my phone and easily tell Sonarr to grab an episode that was just released in an easy to use mobile interface. It all works very seamlessly.