Same experience, my workflow is to run the container from a podman run command, check it runs correctly, podlet to create a base container file, edit the container file (notably with volume and networks in other quadet file) and done (theorically).
I believe the podman-compose project is still actively maintened and could be a nice alternative for docker-compose. But the podman's interface with systemd is so enjoyable.
I don't know if podman-compose is actively developed, but it is unfortunately not a good alternative for docker-compose. It doesn't handle the full feature set of the compose spec and it tends to catch you by surprise sometimes. But the good news is, the new docker-compose (V2) can talk to podman just fine.
I believe the podman-compose project is still actively maintened and could be a nice alternative for docker-compose. But the podman's interface with systemd is so enjoyable.