It seems I do the opposite of many commenters.

I do not run Docker in production at all but I also do not develop any serious projects outside of Docker.

Installed on the host machine are only VSCode, Docker and Git.

You work on a project by cloning it, opening in VSCode and clicking on "Reopen in container".

This will spin up generic services like databases and then the actual app container as a VSCode Remote Container, with all the development tooling inside the container.

Does not matter if tooling changes between projects, any project can be worked on with a single click of "Reopen in container".

Host machine stays clean.