I understand the frustration (making neovim more cohesive is definitely a goal). It sounds like coc provides the UI you are used to, so there's no harm in sticking with that!

Many of our users explicitly don't want automatically called functions that would slow down the editor (autocommands that map signature requests to the language server, for example), so by nature neovim's core implementation is extremely conservative.

One thing I would like to do, is make the automatic pop-ups for signature easier to implement with our current handler, which means a plugin like signature-x could use our upcoming lsp.config option to configure it's borders (https://github.com/neovim/neovim/pull/14681), and match the rest of the UI.

I also have another project I was working on before the 0.5 stabilization phase (https://github.com/mjlbach/neovim-ui). The goal with this is to have composable/overridable UI elements built into core (which we would use for our internal lsp functions), that can be used (or overridden) by UI plugins.

In summary, I think the likelihood of autocompletion (and generally auto-anything) being built-into core is very small, but providing the APIs in neovim core to make snippets - autocompletion - automated UI elements easier for plugin authors is a high priority.

If we're just spitballing thoughts, I'd like something that's kind of the opposite of zen mode. I don't always want signatures and completions and things binging and bopping and showing me suggestions--if I'm working on a codebase and language I'm fluent in then all of that gets turned off. But if I have to pick up some under-documented massive codebase where everyone just uses VS code/intellisense--I'm going to need all the suggestions.

So IMHO I'd love effectively a dial, perhaps the 'distractions' dial. It's not a binary on/off, it's a spectrum. It could be off--nothing at all distracts me (zen mode basically). It might be on a little bit--perhaps just showing current stuff LSP does by default, errors, etc. And it might get cranked up to max--every keystroke throwing more information at me about what's happening, what am I editing, what's related to it, etc. During an editing session I might move inbetween each level on the distraction dial many times. Kind of like zooming in and out as you're editing a photo.

That's an interesting idea! It's for sure possible, it would just take some conditionals/functions to reset diagnostics in your init.vim/init.lua. I personally turn off virtual_text in my private config. I think our current APIs already facilitate this, so I'm happy to answer questions on our discourse or on matrix about how users can do this.

The only thing that pops up by default right now is diagnostics.