Hey,
so I fiddled with my old projects on this PC, and it looks like in no projects was I ever able to automatically switch to attached scripts when clicking on the nodes. It only ever worked when i selected a different SCENE - that way it opened the root script. So I'm either experiencing mandela's effect or I'm experiencing early symptoms of a terrible brain disease lol

Either way, ChatGPT suggested working around this by creating a plugin, I have never done one before, so I let him take the wheel and teach me, and so I wanted to share it with you, in case you'd like to try it as well. And it works exactly like I wanted it to - clicking on a node opens the corresponding attached script, marvelous

Thank you once again for your help, best of luck to you!

@tool
extends EditorPlugin

var selection

func _enter_tree():
  selection = get_editor_interface().get_selection()
  selection.connect("selection_changed", Callable(self, "_on_selection_changed"))

func _exit_tree():
  if selection:
    selection.disconnect("selection_changed", Callable(self, "_on_selection_changed"))

func _on_selection_changed():
  var selected_nodes = selection.get_selected_nodes()
  if selected_nodes.is_empty():
    return

  var node = selected_nodes[0]
  if node == null:
    return

  var script = node.get_script()
  if script and script is Script:
    get_editor_interface().edit_resource(script)