Xcode does have (or had, haven't checked for a while) a lightweight "command line tools only" installer. Unfortunately, that installer omits a lot of the actual useful command line tools, like the notary and stapler tools. I also recall that the command line tool only installer leaves out things like the metal compiler, too. Not sure what the point of it is.
It lets you build basic UNIX-like tools.
> Not sure what the point of it is.
My only familiarity with it is because it's needed by brew. I honestly never looked into exactly what is in the package, but I assumed things like what is installed with -devel packages of yum/apt-get/dnf/etc. Lots of repos have common list of things to install like gcc/make/etc. Again, just guessing, but it's one of the first things I've always run on a new Mac to get it usable for CLI usage.