Hi,
As you said, this is not possible as of now but it is still being under consideration by the product team.
Here you have an “idea” that you can up-vote.
I also agree with everything you said, opening this kind of possibility would open many design options for our solutions.
Regarding progress, they made a changed that if the Item is retried, a new item will be added with the existing progress. Technically it inst persistent but the cover at least a part of the issue we had in the past with this field.
Cheers