I do want to build all of the tools right into the console itself. It'll act a bit like a computer so from a command line OS you'll be able to boot right into the programming IDE, the art tool, the music & sound tool, etc.
The thing about the Athena is I want everything to have a low-level interface, but if you choose to build your game using the high-level language Apollo and its associated IDE, then all of those things will also have a high-level interface on top. For example, you CAN poke/peek at the audio system manually, but it will be easier to just use the provided music and sfx playback library. The goal will be to provide a complete enough library for games that you never actually need to poke/peek anything for probably 99% of games (because I recognize that writing things in raw assembly and poking at arbitrary memory locations isn't exactly the most fun thing in the world for most developers)