Workspaces and User Swatch Panels on Mac

Mohammad, thank you! That was it! I totally forgot about that option.

There is a way to do this, but it's not that intuitive. When you save a swatch Library as AI, it actually is saving an entire Illustrator document - but only the swatches are changed. By default, that saves into your Swatches folder, so when you load the swatch set, only the swatches are apparent in your new document.

If you want to have  a document that opens with your swatches, save it as an AI, and save it somewhere other than the default location. Almost as you would a template - except it's a standard document (you can save it as a template, as well), and then whenever you want that document with those colors, open the entire AI file. This will conform to your workspaces, with the settings you'd saved.

If you open it as an AI, you'll need to use Save As, to avoid overwriting the file, If you save it as a template .AIT, it'll open a new, Untitled document each time.