I’ve done pretty much that, by way of debootstrap. It’s a fun way to set up a system.
I think that live-task-non-free-firmware-pc (gotta have the nonfree apt.sources tho), linux-image-amd64, sudo, and systemd-timesyncd are just enough to get started. Then add gdm3(which pulls in a bunch of gnome), and a terminal (I like kitty & ptyxis).