to answer both comments: i've been working on a way to handle tabs but it's hard to find a solution that isn't half-baked due to the lack of info on tabs given by the os (there are no events or anything, just on a11y attribute that give info on tabs)

as for a scrolling layout, its possible, but does not fit that well with rifts layout, even thought you can get something similar using trackpad swipes to switch between workspaces

Aerospace readme says they have a solution for tabs in mind based on their big refactor.

Haven’t looked into what this looks like, but understandable that it hasn’t made its way to rift yet. I will be trying out rift and report any issues on Github.

I'm pretty new to Mac and didn't know Paper had a port, what isn't to your liking?

Just not a fan of this just being a Hammerspoon thing instead of a proper WM.

https://github.com/karinushka/paneru does that

Interesting, thanks for sharing. My only concern is that it seems to use native MacOS workspaces which Aerospsace and Rift actively avoid. MacOS workspaces are hell to deal with, so I don't think this is for me.