Vim is far from simple no matter how you put it. It is tens of MB, plenty of features and a steep learning curve.

I think a better fit would be nano. Smaller and easier to use than vim.

Now, even nano is not that small, if you want small and you like vim, you have vi (not vim), like the version included in Busybox.

I grew to like vi after thousands of unpleasant exposures, but I'd like to see the day the New Yorker writes about vim at all, nevermind about how simple it is to use

IDK vim and emacs are probably not for everyone, they are like the "higher math" of editing...

This x100. While I do use AI in (Neo)vim it's not built in and you can take it or leave it. And even when you do choose to use it it's on an as-needed/wanted basis.