I'm making the transition to vim as well. My wish list was similar to yours. But I've decided to adapt my expectations to be a better fit with how vim works. In many editors, a tab and a file are equivalent. In vim, you have buffers (in-memory representations of a file being edited), windows (views on a buffer) and tabs (sets of windows). Since in vim a tab is not a file, trying to make that file-per-tab model work may be possible but seems to lead to several pain points.

I'm using the Command-T plugin to navigate the file system (to open files) and to change between opened files (i.e. buffers). I usually work on a single tab, splitting windows when needed, and alternating between buffers with ",b" (Command-T to show current buffers and select one) or "]b" (next buffer).

If I need to work in two different window layouts, I can open a separate tab. That is rare, though.

Additionally, I'm using the Ag plugin to search in files and the qargs plugin to replace text in the searched files.