evil-surround VS avy

it's not built-in but the package evil-surround implements it.

For your second bullet point, I am using evil-surround. Basically select the text, then when still in Visual mode, press S and then your emphasis marker (e.g. *).

evil-surround: port of gpope's vim-surround

Doom emacs includes the evil equivalent by default luckily enough.

However, in Emacs, when evil-surround is enabled, if you take the same initial line and perform the same keystrokes, you instead end up with

If you use evil-mode, evil-surround is a must have.

What I'm looking for is something like AceJump for IntelliJ IDEs or avy for Emacs. These tools let you navigate to some part of the visible text with just a few keystrokes. Here's the behavior I would like in Obsidian, copied from AceJump's page:

For my emacs friends, here's a wonderful package that provides the same functionality: https://github.com/abo-abo/avy

And, if you're interested in some historical context for this "type characters and jump to point" functionality, the Canon Cat: https://youtu.be/o_TlE_U_X3c

Personally I've learned to do things the "Emacs way" and got used to its killing behavior. For multi-line stuff I would mark the region and then use navigation commands to get the point where I want it. For more complex scenarios I use either C-s/C-r or just use avy to get the point where it needs to be. For single line stuff I think M-z works well. Maybe this package could be useful to you as well? Just some ideas, I think there are actually many options here (including going over to evil ;) and it depends on your preferences and needs.

I make extensive use of avy for these kinds of situations.

Avy (avy-move-line) can do it very nicely and interactively for you, see this video.

It sounds like avy is what you're looking for?

Perhaps avy. I would use the commandavy-goto-char-2 then type N a and the corresponding jump key (if it appears). avy-goto-subword-1 is a bit more niche but might also work well.

I'm jumping around on the screen using -> https://github.com/abo-abo/avy#avy-goto-char

This UX does not break my flow (it doesn't require focus/conscious thought):

  1. Press  +  while looking at the place I want to jump to

I installed a package called avy which can do anything I have no issues whatsoever. If you're interested here is my very simple config. There are several options, I like the one with the timer.