My thought would be creatively applying some kind of timer with a swell to something that would start changing tones/effects. For instance, maybe like a distortion pedal that stayed clean for however many secs, and then swelled into dirtiness being handsfree (or footfree as it were). Or apply this to chorus, delay, reverb, or whatever you choose. I think swell is really cool.
Perhaps another idea would be to just make like a motherboard router for all your pedals that could have preset combos of pedals for tones in order to reduce tapdancing between them all in the middle of songs.