So basic, well documented, easily understandable commands like git add, git commit, git push, git branch, and git checkout should have you covered.
the CLI surface area that’s exposed to me is by and large nonsense and does not meet me where I’m at
What an interesting way to say “git has steep learning curve”. Which is true, git takes time to learn and even more to master. You can get there solely by reading the man pages and online docs though, which isn’t something a lot of other complex tools can say (looking at you kubernetes).
Also I don’t know if a package manager really compares in complexity to git, which is not just a version control tool, it’s also a thin interface for manipulating a directed acyclic graph.