I reckon that nice commits breaking up a big PR that can be merged straight to main is the best outcome.

But - I also think that always squashing is a natural reaction to "twiddling with the past" being difficult (but possible!) with git - e.g., you start with good intentions, you have your nice commit messages, but inevitably you need to go back and make some changes to changes and the "chore: unfuck it for real this time" style "fixup" commits start creeping in and you throw your hands in the air in despair rather than dare to cross `git rebase` once more.