And 'handled' brings up another point because I don't even know what to call this intermediate state of existence that isn't a domain of git. When I'm done with a virtual branch do I... commit to it? Collapse it into a real branch? It's new terminology, new concepts, new X to deal with something that COULD have been handled with just git. Messier, sure, but messy is fine, under the hood. So long as the UI treats it the same, who cares how nasty the git had to get?
I'm sure there are things that you simply couldn't have done with pure git. But what I'm less sure of is how useful any of those things are. Let me tell you this: auto branch naming? That's not only not something I would use, but something I would consider an anti-pattern. I never want my utilities doing my work for me. I only want my utilities making my work simple and seamless. It's the focus on unimportant and anti-useful stuff like that which makes me concerned about my experience with the product overall.
Again - very happy that you all have put this together! It's a great implementation for the things you are wanting to do, as far as I can tell. It definitely feels, to me, like you've got a winning product on your hands and that my complaints aren't relevant. I'm just not in your demographic. But if there is any question about "who" you are losing, I can at least give you one point of data to say that I'm averse to any productivity app that doesn't trust me more than the app. And I think your app makes some strong assumptions about what it "needs" and that is a detriment to the end user, no matter how "necessary" it feels.