What problem does a magical "does what I mean" undo solve that pressing ^W or ^H doesn't? At a minimum, your "superior workflow" is "<Esc>ui" or "^Ou", both of which are more keystrokes and require your editor to read your mind.
Or my superior workflow is Alt-u or hold U, which is a single shortcut/keystroke, so you lose there as well
The other issue with your attempt at solving undo without undo is that the deletion doesn't become part of redo, also a single word with a typo could be in the middle of a paragraph where you navigated with a trackpad, while ^W would delete near the current cursor position
You don't need magic to fix the ubersimplicity of current defaults, just a bit of openness
So now it's not "more keystrokes" as you originally claimed (and it's a higher number of keypressses vs holding U), and you still haven't addressed the issue with ^W I've described
The other issue with your attempt at solving undo without undo is that the deletion doesn't become part of redo, also a single word with a typo could be in the middle of a paragraph where you navigated with a trackpad, while ^W would delete near the current cursor position
You don't need magic to fix the ubersimplicity of current defaults, just a bit of openness