This is an umbrella ticket for the first stage of SPM-4736, all the details should be added after WT-17439 completion.

The first stage of this project is to conduct research for the rework, with the goal of identifying a better approach to reducing complexity and improving the clarity of the layered cursors implementation. Another part could be preparing layered cursors for the async step-up/elegant step-down.

The initial plan is for two people to work on this for two weeks.

The main outcome of this ticket is to have a document describing what we are going to do as the next step, along with some form of a global plan for layered cursor improvements.