If you’re running emacs 29+ I posit you get less value out of a starter kit or framework than beforehand.
Treesitter is baked in for syntax, eglot is baked in for language servers (intellisense), project and tab-bar give you scoped workspaces. use-package is baked in for downloading and configuring dependencies.
Modus-themes are also built in now, so you can use modus-operandi and modus-vivendi out of the box. Two incredible themes with a lot of research invested in them.
My config is a few hundred lines of unadulterated elisp now and most of the code is around completion and fuzzy searching.
The point being, modern emacs is a lot more viable from a vanilla config now than it ever has been.
Treesitter is baked in for syntax, eglot is baked in for language servers (intellisense), project and tab-bar give you scoped workspaces. use-package is baked in for downloading and configuring dependencies.
Modus-themes are also built in now, so you can use modus-operandi and modus-vivendi out of the box. Two incredible themes with a lot of research invested in them.
My config is a few hundred lines of unadulterated elisp now and most of the code is around completion and fuzzy searching.
The point being, modern emacs is a lot more viable from a vanilla config now than it ever has been.
Edit: changed emacs 28 to emacs 29