Shhhhhhhhh!
No spoiling the addition of short cut keys! That's for another update later! :P
Jokes (or not?) aside yeah it really clicked with me when I considered the way other "solo" protagonist games work. Like the original digital devil story games or even pokemon. Sure you are one person, but you get to recruit monsters that add variety and thats what makes it fun. It was pretty much when thinking about Persona that I had that thought of "it would be nice if Red could change her class like in those games, but I don't really have anything she could symbolically switch between." And then I had the galaxy brain realization that the tarot cards were right there in front of me haha.
And after that it really felt like all those disjointed ideas and mechanics naturally fell into place. I wish I could put out a demo for people to try but, at this stage it's just not ready for that yet.