If I’m reading your post right, you basically want a fully functional system that is console only (no GUI), right? So when you go to install, just simply skip installing the desktop environment/window manager.
That, or you can set it up to where your system boots to the console, and you can activate the DE/WM if you want to (like startx for X11). Each environment is different, but I think it’s removing the line for starting the DE/WM from either systemctl or maybe a hook, I forget.