I got annoyed by my zsh prompt being laggy while in a big git repo, but I didn't want to give up git status in the prompt. Fortunately @b0rk wrote https://jvns.ca/blog/2023/08/08/what-helps-people-get-comfortable-on-the-command-line-/ and tipped me off to https://github.com/romkatv/powerlevel10k which totally solves this problem! It was easy to add it to my oh-my-zsh config and set it up with a very similar prompt to what I was using before, except always instant. Pure win.