I see where you're coming from. FWIW, I've been using Neovim for an odd 7 years or so and only use plugins where absolutely necessary. I'll usually just add an appropriate BufWritePost (trigger after saving the buffer) autocommand for the language's file extension that does what I want. Or I'll add a keybind in .config/nvim/ftplugin/<lang>.vim (or <lang>.lua). You can do fancier stuff with plugins but I find that I just don't need it (and you probably don't either, by the looks of it).

The default LSP client config at https://github.com/neovim/nvim-lspconfig#suggested-configura... sets everything up for you, if you're using an LSP server. I'm not sure why it hasn't been merged into the Neovim repo; possibly because they want to keep the editor core fast and minimal.

All this means you have to do a little more configuring than with something like VSCode, but to be honest, I haven't legitimately needed to make big changes to my config in a few years. There's stuff I add for fun (like little lua scripts to manage my clipboard and to layout tabs the way I want), but to maintain a 'VSCode' level of functionality none of it's needed. The advantage of spending a little extra time, for me, has been that my editor 'fits like a glove', so to speak :)