I do have a wandering eye for EXWM, it probably would require my skill with emacs to increase and an optimization of my config so as to defer heavy tasks etc. If you have any suggestions on how to get there, I am all ears! The more I use emacs, the more I want to make my entire computer emacs.
You likely don't need to optimize anything; Emacs has seen some pretty significant optimizations recently (native Emacs Lisp compilation, tree-sitter modes, better handling of long lines, etc.) so performance is rarely the issue.
However, you do need to avoid call-process (spawning blocking processes) as much as possible. Also, my experience with TRAMP has been pretty awful due to the fix for https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=12145 (literally: TRAMP blocks all of Emacs while waiting on a network connection).
