Honestly, I'd tolerate an adless grey timer, you don't even have to trick it that time has passed.

Just open in another tab, wait for skip option, skip (but probably not in a perfectly timed robotic way), then pause. Grey and silent midroll would be annoying but still tolerable.

People who know programming and how far it can go seem to sometimes trap themselves in very difficult problems that would be great to solve, but undervalue a version without that complicated luxury.

I'm all for trying to solve it, but a tool that doesn't is still good. I just don't want to be aware of what the companies want to make me aware of.