I agree. I am happiest just using plain Emacs for coding and every once in a while separately using an LLM or once or twice a day use gemini-cli or codex for a single task.
My comment is for coding, but same opinion for writing emails - once in a blue moon, then I will use a LLM manually.
You raise a good point. For specific programming tasks, I don't really want token-by-token suggestions in an IDE. And, like you, when I have a specific problem, e.g., "I need to do Kerberos auth like this in that language." -- I go to ask an LLM, and it is generally very useful. Then I look at the produced code and say: "Oh, that's how you do it." I almost never copy/paste the results from the LLM into my code base.
My comment is for coding, but same opinion for writing emails - once in a blue moon, then I will use a LLM manually.