Hey kmwr, I'm the maintainer of Appsmith. The install script downloads and configures the docker-compose.yml file underneath the hood. It also allows users to configure SSL, setup encryption keys etc which would otherwise need to be done manually.
I understand that in order to have a repeatable installation process (as per Devops best practices), you'd like to have a single configuration file instead. We are working on some Helm charts for this very purpose.
For now, you can go through the process of installing Appsmith via the script and then use the generated files as a template in your Terraform/Ansible scripts.