I've been daily driving xonsh for a couple of years too. It _sounds_ like a terrible idea for reasons you can't quite put your finger on, but other than a minor annoyance every now and then, it's been great.

I especially like iterating over files as Path objects with the simple syntax

    for f in p`.\*\.jpg`:
        if f.isdir():
            foo = $(echo @(f.absolute()))