I'm in a similar situation (just redid my setup with Niri) and Ghostty's slow startup is essentially my only problem with it, and I've loved foot for years. Ghostty's font rendering looks better to me though, so I'm conflicted between foot's instant startup and the (to me) nicer looking text in Ghostty. Since I tens to keep terminals open for a while, I've been going with Ghostty, but I'd love to somehow get both qualities.

Foot would be beyond perfect if it had ligature support.