Thumbnails with Images In Them

I have a new workflow that involves sets of images so i have everthing set in the lister as thumbnails. The problem is that the root folder (which is nothing but subfolders) doesn't have any graphical representation of what's in it.

Is it possible to define a folder format to show a sampling of the pictures inside it?

There's not any "folder.jpg" in these folders. It's for AI generated art and it names it on it's own.

Also, I have another unrelated workflow that uses folder.jpg frequently so I don't want to impact that worflow. I'm looking to do this for the set of folders in the lister for this workflow.

I saw this post but that seems like it's a full system change:
https://resource.dopus.com/t/thumbnail-view-of-folders/41778/2

Instead of yellow boxes I'd like to show a sample of what's inside:

Try checking Preferences / File Display Modes / Thumbnails / Display thumbnails for folders.

Here are the settings I use.
turn on display thumbnails for folders
and then I use generate folder thumbnails from images inside folders.
This will show four images from the folder as long as you don't choose the top option folder thumbnails via the shell.

I don't want to generate thumbnails because i have a sensitive workflow external to this workflow that has it's own intentional thumbnails (folder.jpg)

What happens if i don't say "Generate Thumbnails"? Does it leave it blank or just dynamically show what's in the folder?

Also, some of these folders contain videos, so I don't want it to sluggishly try to generate display thumbnails for that.