If you are looking for workspaces i.e. organizing buffers into logical group, use Perspective: https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/tree/master/contrib/pe....
> And it doesn't even look for them in the cwd, but does I-haven't-figured-out-what-yet instead.
As another commenter suggested, you can use :cd. However, you can use a better interactive interface and use "SPC f f" or "SPC f h". Spacemacs is, after all, Vim + Emacs.
Emacs has that kind of visual tabs but Spacemacs does not integrate it since it gets in the way more than being useful.
> If you are wondering why that SPC stuff isn't the equivalent to command-mode with ":" bound to SPC: commands are easy to define even in vim, they can have descriptive names due to their nature and I don't have to remember them, as I can use auto-complete! For example, I have :Rename and :Remove. Actually, I don't even remember if it's :Remove or :Delete, I just use autocompletion every time I need it and find out.
That kind of auto-complete is really bare. If you want something like that, try pressing "SPC :" or "Alt-x" in Spacemacs. You can search in any order you like, not prefix, i.e. if you look for command "list-package", either "list pa" or "pa list" gives you the command.
I mean, in Vim, to get help for a key binding, I have to type something like "Ctrl+W". Really? In Emacs, you get it by pressing "C-h k" then press the key binding you don't know which command is bound to it. You even get a cheatsheet like style in Emacs. For example, if you don't know what the commands in "SPC f" does, simply press "SPC f ?" and you get an interactive cheatsheet that you can easily narrow donw. Press "C-z" to open its description.