The docs are skewed toward POSIX systems like Linux and macOS and documentation for Windows-specific gotchas is spotty.
I started a document so we can start to fill this information in:
Regarding ipy I would not go down that road. That interface is not really for running Guild CLI commands but rather for running functions within a Notebook. It’s very different from a typical use of Guild.
If you want to invoke Guild CLI commands, from Python, use the subprocess module and treat Guild as you would any program.
But back to the environment setup… you might consider skipping the virtual environment setup and focus on getting your project working. Once you’re happy with things you can take the step to use isolated environments.
You’re already using conda so you can just keep doing that without messing around with environment variables, etc.