Why not EXWM to have free tiling instead of using i3 like a set of FF tabs... That's was my path years ago, I've tried a bit i3 concluding it's rigid tiling model it's essentially useless and I've in the end use tabs/split screen and rarely stacks. Then EXWM, at first very hard to start as a WM (I was also new to Emacs, former hardcore vimmer) but thereafter... I can't even use floating WMs nowadays... Though I do not user eat/vterm/eshell simply because for casual terminal usage (living in Emacs makes me use the terminal much, much less) it's not that comfy.

Dired on contrary is super good also to rename files en masse, to filter them and so on.