This sounds very complex indeed. I don't understand why you're trying to work against Gerrit?

This usually means sub-branches, and ALOT of commits. Many of them with commit messages like "WIP" or "tmp"

This sounds like a guide on how not to use Gerrit. Why have commits with pointless messages? Just amend the commit you're on?

The point of Gerrit is not to always be 1 commit away from main, but for each commit to be meaningful, "WIP" and "tmp" are not.

If you find youself multiple meaningful commits "away" from main, and you want each one to be reviewed individually, then Gerrit will create a chain of changes for the user to easily review.

I commonly get messages back from gerrit on things i need to change before it accepts the CL.

Unsure what you mean here? Like what?

As the review progress, I keep developing in my dev-branch to accomodate/modify the feature.

Why? Just keep amending the commit you're working on and uploading it? Why care so much of intermediary state of a commit?

Overall I feel like you're trying to work like you're using a PR workflow, when you're not.

I've created a blogpost here if you care to see how I use it.

Overall I think you're question is probably better answered on the Gerrit Mailing list, where it's easier to reply to the multiple points you raise. The Gerrit community doesn't really monitor stack overflow.

I want to thank you for your question as I feel like many new Gerrit users have the same problem and I hope this can be a place for people to learn.