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There is a middle ground -- https://codeberg.org/ashton314/emacs-bedrock or minimal starter kits like it.

Especially if you don't want to use an agent to help you get started. If you're using an agent, starting from vanilla is much more feasible.

There are some good tutorials on youtube to start from zero. E.g. "Emacs from scratch" by System Crafters.

I only started using an AI to help fix issues or understand configuration problems when my config was already >1000 lines.

But yea there are several ways to approach this :)

Yikes, that's over 12 hours of videos in that series. Stuff like that scares me away from trying it out.

I understand that. It's very slow pace. I did it bit by bit over several days. But I was also often skipping ahead.

Good recommendation, you (the reader) may also like https://github.com/jamescherti/minimal-emacs.d