The recipe script should have a "why-not" equivalent

Great idea.

Yes, I agree that would be a great thing to have. Currently, whenever the recipe fails to apply there is an error thrown which takes time to find out the exact reason for the failure.

Looks like this is a related one https://www.drupal.org/project/distributions_recipes/issues/3463641 →
Can we add it to related issues?

moved to Drupal Core, per https://www.drupal.org/project/distributions_recipes/issues/3513044 🌱 [meta] DrupalCon Atlanta: Triage issue queue and move any open issues to Drupal core Active