I just use super(win key)/hyper (bound to capslock) for i3-related commands and leave emacs to its own devices with normal binds
There can never be too many modifier keys:
Yes, I am misunderstanding the problem. The windows/mac command key leave shift, control and alt free for i3.
Yeah this is what I do. This article feels like crazy overengineering for something that's not really a problem
That's fine as far as it goes, but I don't think that gets you what this article is for, which is things like using the same binding context-dependently to navigate between emacs splits and regular window manager windows, context-dependently. Which is a fun bit of overengineering.