Similarly I'd love to have keyboard shortcuts for all transitions or be able to globally add transitions to all scenes in a project. Really helps for those weekly agency tasks for episodes.

Just my two cents. When deleting silences and filler words, one option to 'animate' the transition and avoid the jump cuts would be 'auto zoom in/out' transitions. I mean, if the framing allows it, when cutting a silence there would be an automatic 'zoom in' from a medium shot to a close-up shot and after a specific time or cue make a 'zoom out' to the original shot. Sorry if it wasn't clear.

This needs more description, what do you want to animate? Or what do you actually want to accomplish that is 'smart'?

Yes, transitions, especially after deleting filler words, is not pretty. Sometimes words are cut off as a result of the delete process.

Can I turn a 1898 Photo of a face into a talking animation.