Thanks for the detailed answer! The filesystem browser trick is pretty neat, but still I feel that this is less than ideal as I have to climb up the tree each time I reopen the session.
I also tried the “project” solution and it seems like it doesn’t work as I expected it, for example I put a .kateproject file in the parent folder containing this:
I thought I’d find this project in Kate’s welcome screen, but it’s not there, am I missing something?
(very late) EDIT: I had made a mistake there, I placed the file in the wrong directory, it actually works as intended and I can see the file tree without issue in this way
By the way, I think this is worth opening a feature request for, it’s way too hard to use for no apparent reason imo