As far as I know, Proton-specific patches are usually hacks targeted either generally at games or at specific titles.

On average I don't expect specific merits using Proton vs using vanilla Wine for non-game applications. On the other hand, no other launching script is provided, but if you call the wine executable with the correct options and environment variables, it should just work. The launched script expects environment variables and other stuff from Steam, so it won't work without Steam. It is meant to be integrated into Steam, so building and using it without Steam might be a little less straightforward than pure Wine, but you can definitely do it.