In magic, is there a way to create a log of commands and commands created from GUI button presses? Tried the logcommands command (which sounds like it would fit the bill) and it creates a zero-sized, empty file. Perhaps there is another log that is being created elsewhere.

No, I think the "logcommands" command just needs fixing, because it was designed for the very old command line interface, not for the Tcl/Tk command line interface.

Thanks @User. I was brainstorming a way to script to generate the skywater devices from the schematic/netlist into the magic layout with the right parameters without doing it one by one from the pulldown. Poking around I see netlist_to_layout.py in the open_pdk scripts directory. Does that script (or another) help generate the devices in magic? Not sure how to think about the difficulty of the task.

Yes, that's the one. You can run it from magic with

File->Import SPICE

in the sky130 PDK. I had some issues with the way the device layouts were generated last time I tried that, seems like it was trying to draw two different devices on top of one another, but when I selected each device and updated the parameterized cell view, the problem fixed itself. Just in case you run into the same issue.