I thought about this a bit more. In all but the very earlier part of the game, the way HandyHands works by stack size is convenient, because unless resources are very short, one (or more) stacks is almost always what I want - the constraint is inventory size, not tying up a few hundred iron plates.
That said, it would be nice if it - and Autocraft - recognised when a craft produces more than 1 item. I grant you there's an argument that if I set a minimum of 50 small electric poles, yes, I should not be surprised when it takes me from 49 to 51 - but I probably just set that because it's the default. I'd suggest that for multiple-item crafts it regards the lower bound as a number to craft me up to, not to exceed.