I pretty much see the things very similarly to how you described them in your piece. But to be explicit -- options are always limited and causal outcomes of each choice are deterministic. But the actual act of choice is always free even in cases when it's completely influenced and determined by conditioned biases (which may seem like fate or lack of free choice). And then there are "true convergence" points. For example, no matter what choices we make, each of us will die one day. Similarly, the end state of the universe is already predetermined despite us not knowing whether it's big crunch, big freeze, or big bounce.

So, the whole free will/fate "problem" is to me like the circumstances of a swimmer with agency in a mighty river of causality which they cannot get out of.

As for Sapolsky -- I didn't read anything he wrote and most probably never will.