>it seems like ZSH tries to update on every shell spawn

Learn your tools first, not bloated frameworks. There's a gulf of difference between vanilla zsh and this:

>Community-driven (with 2,400+ contributors) framework for managing your zsh configuration

>Includes 300+ optional plugins (rails, git, macOS, hub, docker, homebrew, node, php, python, etc)

>140+ themes to spice up your morning, and an auto-update tool that makes it easy to keep up with the latest updates from the community