Well, kinda. I define a workable system as a system I, personally, can work with straight away, with a minimum loss of productivity. It is not at all meant as a judgement on how good plain vim/emacs are.

This workability indeed might require temporally replicating old habits while I learn the new ones, which lazyvim does. Vscode-like file trees, global search, or integrated terminal, for example.

It's also about discoverability, like the helpers shown through which-key. And the guarantee that a set of default plugins play well with each other, so that I can leave toying with the config for whenever I have the time.

Some people might think this is a crutch for properly learning the tool, but this is not my experience. I'm much more likely to get comfortable with vim and learn further if I can be in it 8 hours a day from the start. At first I used the integrated terminal to run git commands, now I invoke lazygit, which I love. At first I used the file tree to navigate, now I have custom commands to bring a file and its test suite side to side on a keypress. This gradual curve is what I was missing earlier.