Another option to consider that would also address partially #1664 would be to replace the prompt with a picker like ui. There's some repetition of not quite the same code between prompts and pickers, so that might help to simplify code paths as well.

I really like how Kakoune does it — the cmd prompt is in the status line (all the status stuff is on the right side)

How is the maintainers opinion on this? What is the status? I mainly use helix in zellij, which also comes with an own bar. That is a line count of three, of which one is not really necessary.

I very much like this idea. Having an empty line that I rarely look at below the status line permanently is annoying. Having it pop in above the status like when a command is being written seems like a great compromise.

Just stumbled across this issue. This is similar what #12204 does