The concept of a "maskable adjustment layer" came up in conversation - where you can selectively mask an NDE filter on the layers below.
I realized that after ZeMarmot :gimp: (npub1wvm…5rdg) 's work on making passthrough layer groups cover the full group render, we basically have this already. With a minor code tweak I'll be submitted soon, you can recreate maskable adjustment layers right in GIMP!