Outlining Non Overlapping Objects

It just struck me.

Make a compound path.

Apply a stroke to it

Apply Effect > Path > Offset path to the stroke with a large setting, so they are all united.

Duplicate the effect and apply the same value with negative.

Tristan,

As I (mis)understand it, there is no easy meaningful way to create a stroked path that encloses all the paths shown, because of the shapes of their end segments.

To elaborate, where is the leftmost spiky end of the first path from the bottom to be connected to the rounded end of the one above it, and similarly for the top four paths, and similarly for the rightmost ends?

It is not clear to me what you mean by outline a group of non-overlapping objects.

Can you give an example (sketch) of what the result should be?