starting from a 'known good' config file (olddefconfig, allnoconfig) and then carefully iteratively switching options around is the only methodology ive had any success with.

I've had some good experiences with using Gemini to help me explore Kernel config options (e.g. "whats the minimum set of config options i need to have enabled to faciliate feature X?")

LLMs in general are very knowledgeable about the Linux kernel (unsurprisingly!) which is why I made my original comment. You can ask them about relevant places in the kernel source tree to look at for a given mechanism, and they'll point you to the file and function without having to 'look'.