my workflow involves switching between files in working set, sometimes going back to staged. The git panel is easier to navigate than the file tree. I also need to see all the markers for recent changes I made, they are in git diff

Inside the editor in VSCode I would select a chunk that includes the markers that I want to stage, and stage them deliberately like you do.

For the actual commit often I have to do terminal because VSCode would fail to give me the relevant commit hook error message.