Improve backend efficiency

[AdvancedCodingMonkey]

• Running faster would be nice
• Reduce redundancy -- currently mut lists are often in 2-3 places, would be nice to have them in one place and then just get them for where they're needed
• Currently we rely on the display_name from clusters.py far too broadly and for too many things, and this makes things very inflexible and brittle... this should be modified (more convo/digging needed!)
• Adding a new variant could probably be made streamlined and more easy
• Set up automatic updates that go to staging?