If an electrolytic cell or chemical battery was surrounded by spinning magnets, could it be set up in such a way that the energy of the magnets would directly create electrolytic potential in the cell; in effect, converting magnetic flux into chemical energy without generating an external electric current intermediately? Conceded that there’s little practical reason to do this, but is it possible?
Yes and no.
Something needs to complete the circuit. You might reasonably be pushing protons around in the cell, but electrons still need to flow outside of the cell. So you need the external wire.
But you could arrange the geometry of the system such that the majority of the magnetic flux movement was happening in the cell, and much less so in the wire. So with a bit of hand waving claim the magnets were directly driving the chemistry. But it is a stretch. This is especially so as you don’t get DC from waving magnets around. (Well not for long.) You need something to stop the reversed flux change from reversing the chemical reactions. That is going to need some trickery in the circuit, which is almost certainly going to need to happen in the wired side. Either a switch slaved to the magnet movement or a diode. So even harder to exclude the wire from the definition of what is happening.
In the end you are still just driving charge about. Whether electrons or protons comes down the specifics of the conductor. The chemistry is a result of this movement. How you define the actual chemistry as a result is going to get you into the weeds of how deeply you define the nature of the chemical reaction. It’s mostly QED under the covers. But there is a lot happening before you get there.