I GOT IT!
Minor incompatibility with Krastorio2. It seems the Krastorio2 is adding/modifying personal-roboports in the data-updates stage. Due to the order of mod loading closest first's data-updates.lua is ran before Krastorio2's data-updates.lua which updates the roboport's bot limit and construction radius.
Which in the end completely throws off closest first or maybe throws off factorio?? The prototype closest first wants to put in the equipment grid exists according to factorio itself but when you try to insert it into the equipment grid factorio seems to decide that nope doesn't actually exist.
I "fixed" this by simply adding "(?) Krastorio2" to the dependencies in closest first. This makes Krastorio2 a hidden optional dependency which forces krastorio2's data-updates to run before closest-first's data-updates and seems to so far solved my problem. Just need to turn off the debugging crap I added as my poor console is getting spammed while bots take out these trees. haha