I primarily play cEDH, so be aware I have some biases during deck building and take my advice with a grain of salt.
In my experience, the rule of thumb is the more consistency you want in a deck the more tutors you should be running. I know you mentioned wanting to preserve the power level of your deck and that means to me that your deck will always be inconsistent -- some games you'll draw a god hand, some games you won't.
As an alternative to more filtering or protection, have you considered adding in disruption to your opponent's setups? Again, power level considerations might be a problem here but things like Massacre Girl or wheel effects might help you into a more stable position early.
I also always favor free interaction in blue to defend your key pieces, but that has the power problem and the consistency problem -- running one or two pieces of free interaction (E.g. Force of Will, etc.) won't help too much on average if you don't have ways to find them.
At the end of the day, I think I'd lean into disruption in any spellslinger type deck like Kess in order to reach a position where you can leverage your yard to outmaneuver your opponents.