Thanks for the information hierarchy / conceptual boundaries distinction, makes sense. I didn't know the latter term but tried to describe it in the last section of the post, nice to have a name now.

There are apps and sites that manage to keep the number of cards at min, one is selfridges (not an ad, was just open in another tab), another is firefox settings. MacOS Finder does a good job at grouping things with spacing, and macos generally. iOS seems to put everything on cards, at least nowadays.