what’s the consensus around here on the interplay between repl-based dev and options like autowrite?
Repl-based dev is usually evaluation of content from your editor's buffer, which may not be your written file content on disk. There is no question about how things are in sync between your written files and your repl, because it already differs between your buffers and your repl. So, set your editor's options whatever you like, but keep in mind to sometime explicitly write all your files and "refresh" the repl loaded namespaces to start afresh.
That's good advice. I've seen bugs happen in production because someone had it working in their REPL but the version they committed wasn't the same thing they tested.
What is autowrite?