Hi,
There is vCO plugin for vSphere Replication, but it has limited functionality.
Currently there is no public API or CLI for vSphere Replication.
Current VR releases do not support the use cases you described, still these are common requirements and might be included in a future release.
Policy-driven protection (not VR based) configuration is on the roadmap for an upcoming VSAN release, in case you are using VSAN datastore.
Regards,
Martin