Pretty sure that just has to do with how widgets are integrated

Those are for widgets that you choose to enable. Hard to access search features without permission to search, if you don't want them, all you have to do is ... not enable them / disable them if you flipped the on ...

Kvaesitso is awesome, updates regularly, and was the best launcher I found that worked for my use case transition from Nova.

Granted I avoided trying a lot of the Freemium ones, or others.that were corporate controlled. Not interested in a forced migration 2.0, open source is nice cause it can always be forked if something happens.

It's a launcher, it can do a heck of a lot of things, and needs permissions to be able to do so.

But you don't actually have to allow any of them in modern Androids if you don't need those features. Nova Launcher also has quite a list, but I haven't actually enabled any of them, it has never asked to, and everything works fine.

There is no way to use the built in features without those permissions I think. Like weather (location), search contacts and calendars, ..

I think they have been there a long time. It also needs pretty deep access if you want it to open notifications bar and more..

Someone correct me if I'm wrong

that's because you can integrate your contacts, calendar and more... calm down

Is it not open source and on F-Droid? I used it before switching to Niagara.