I doubt Neovim would bundle them. I asked for two things which are conceptually much simpler: 1. a project manager/file explorer solution (file browser plugin

I doubt Neovim would bundle them. I asked for two things which are conceptually much simpler: 1. a project manager/file explorer solution (file browser plugins have always been super popular for Vim; plus Sublime, VS Code, etc, all offer file explorers, they're extremely useful for... exploring projects for folks. 2. moving the command bar at the top And they were both closed as WONTFIX mentioning that the Neovim core is meant to be compact and everything else should be built on top. So that would require someone making and maintaining a super popular Neovim "distribution". I'm not saying it won't happen, but both in the Vim world and the Emacs one it doesn't seem like any distribution "won out" and you're always worried your distribution will just go away at some point.