vim-rsi VS readline.vim

that however may lead to suffering. You will have to change a lot of defaults and this can make you unable to work with default Vim. Try out https://github.com/tpope/vim-rsi and see if that will suffice.

I use vim.rsi by te legendary tpope.

You can you this plugin to get the same mappings in insert mode for Vim:

https://github.com/tpope/vim-rsi

You may be able to emulate it with cnoremap. See vim-rsi which is the set -o emacs version of what you want (but it also applies in insert mode).

I heavily rely on tpope/vim-rsi, which will provide you with to hop to the end of the line in insert mode

Look no further than the vim plugin master himself, Tim Pope: https://github.com/tpope/vim-rsi

I would just define whatever "standard text-editing keyboard shortcuts" you want in insert mode, and then just use insert mode as your "vim for note-taking". Kind of like Tim Pope's RSI but with the "standard" key bindings you want instead of bindings based on Emacs/readline.

And ryvnf/vim-readline for commandline mode. It provides even better readline emulation than vim-rsi.

I am using tpope/vim-rsi to have readline bindings in insert mode (and ryvnf/readline.vim for commandline mode). Those also shadow builtins, but it is worth it for me.