That does sound great, but to be fair most of the time, the helm equivalent is to type one or a few more characters of the one file name you want and press ente

That does sound great, but to be fair most of the time, the helm equivalent is to type one or a few more characters of the one file name you want and press enter. Avy is a great tool, but in my experience using C-s actually requires fewers strokes than Avy over 90% of the time. Being limited to whatever is on screen tends to get very annoying, as is the mental load of pressing random characters instead of completing a word you already know. For me Avy shines for things like avy-copy-line that can prevent you from moving back and forth.