I worked with that combination for several years, until I switched to Kakoune. (The nice thing about kakoune is that you can connect multiple clients to the sa

I worked with that combination for several years, until I switched to Kakoune. (The nice thing about kakoune is that you can connect multiple clients to the same session, instead of doing splits in the editor.) I still use both i3 (Sway when I can) and tmux, at any rate. I recommend avoiding nested heterogenous splits, as much as possible. In other words, the cognitive burden of having vim's "windows" inside tmux panes inside terminal emulators (which can also introduce splits and tabs) inside i3 windows, is just too great. So if I'm running tmux, I try to have it be the only thing running on that i3 screen. If I'm splitting Vim, I try to have it occupy an entire i3 screen or tmux window. If I'm splitting a tmux window into panes, I try not to split vim inside it. And I never use terminal emulator splits or tabs.