I recommend LMDE nowadays, but it doesn’t really matter.

I just want to say, as a light pollution researcher, it warms my heart to see people start to get it.

You’re on the right track and got plenty of good suggestions already. I’ll add that the way to improve the feeling of safety is to light the faces of people, so you need lights at least taller than humans if you want them pointing downwards. Uniformity of lighting is also a big part, so multiple small lamps tend to be better than one big one.

In short, keep it dim, amber/red, uniform, localized, downward pointing (with dark roads if possible) and turn it off when not needed (most town in France shit off the lights in the evening and no one complained).

Also, keeping the streets narrow, winding and having buildings close (aka European streets) will confine the light in the city better than the opposite.

Feel free to ask me anything and good luck!

Recall won’t help with that. You also don’t need an AI for the second one. Just something more than a basic shell.

I honestly don’t understand the use case. What do you find interesting about it?