Fastest way to compile some short segments into a new track?

Nope!

The code in these plug-ins is somewhat convoluted. I’ve got some cleaner “detect sounds” code if you are interested in pursuing this as a plug-in. In fact (rummaging around…) this code isn’t too bad: > https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/updating-sound-silence-finder/27236/1

Nyquist does not have access to the Audacity clipboard, but it is possible to copy audio from one track to another by temporarily holding the data in the SCRATCH symbol. There’s an example of this here: > Running a plug-in once only - #7 by steve
It would be relatively easy to adapt this code to copy a selection from one track, apply a fade-in fade-out to the copied data and paste it into the next selected track.

Thanks for those.