OP here. I think this is completely correct. And I ended up using the same system as you -- plain text in Vim. For me, it's super low-friction and I see it all the time, so it's easy to make it habitual.
agreed. and in vim's case I love having one tool I can use on a local machine, or over ssh to a remote server. one tool for coding, tech docs, notes, book writing etc. and its free and its open etc
