Over at Lambda Land, Ashton Wiersdorf opines on what he considers the best Emacs packages. You may agree or disagree with any particular choice in his list but it’s hard to argue that his choices are not reasonable.
His list starts with Magit, Org Mode, and Avy, which should, in my opinion, be on everyone’s top 5 (or so) list but that’s low hanging fruit. Next on his list is Embark, Eat, and Jinx. I use Embark and like it but it’s not a must have for me. I really liked the idea of eat, but after I installed it, I never used it so it was a dud for me. One of the things everyone loves about it is how fast it is but the speed of all the Emacs terminal emulators seem fine to me. I’m not familiar with Jinx but it seems like it’s something worth checking out.
His next three packages are Vertico, Consult, and Corfu. I don’t use any of these. I much prefer the Swiper/Ivy/Counsel package. It does pretty much the same things and I’m used to and happy with it so I’m not inclined to change.
Regardless of my predilections, these are great packages and worth taking a look at to see if they would work for you.