2. I myself consider the virtual emulation of workspaces to be the strongest feature of the AeroSpace. If I could disable the workspace switching animation in yabai or Amethyst (with SIP enabled, of course), I'd probably not bother myself creating AeroSpace. That's what the "space" part in the app name means. It resembles the strongest feature of AeroSpace - workspaces
I also tried implementing an i3 like workspace numbering/creating on top of yabai - it was an uphill battle due to how limited native macOS space management is and I never finished, so thank you for creating AeroSpace :)
I actually use it in tandem with yabai now - I added an "exec-on-window-hide"[0] option similar to "exec-on-workspace-change", and use it to make the hidden windows transparent (and to make them visible again)[1].
I wonder if hooks like that would be a good way to have a nice middle-ground to let people who don't care as much about SIP to extend upon AeroSpace's model?
I'll probably send over a pull request for your consideration soon.
[0] https://github.com/irth/AeroSpace/commit/54b48aa0edf9817031c...
[1] https://gist.github.com/irth/0bc96778c6073c756d3bb657f1bfe8b...