While this would not be a valid use case for all users, some will most likely benefit from being able to read directly from a group of sstables loaded offline at another location. Similarly being able to write sstable files directly would also be useful.

Some Caveats,
I think any implementation which requires Cassandra-all is going to be a nonstarter. We should be compatible with all C* versions and not impose any additional dependencies if at all possible.

No Cassandra Configuration should be required to implement this, the current C* tools all utilize Database Descriptor or something like that which means there are many checks for C* core configuration files. We should not require this.

I know some other groups are working on this approach as well so let's keep an eye out for those and see if we can use their work as well.