I don’t love vi-mode, but I’ll address your comment.

Many people these days, including yours truly, have caps-lock mapped to ctrl if held or esc if tapped. That’s good ergonomics and worth considering for any tech-savvy person.

Instead of the 3b I would type bbb (because I agree with you that typing numerals is a pain).

So (caps lock)bbbcw isn’t bad. It’s better than it looks, because if you’re a vim user then it’s just so automatic. “cw” feels like one atomic thing, not two keypresses.

And importantly, it doesn’t involve any chords.