Yes, it does. :-)
Sorry, I'd add more if I thought I could contribute anything useful, but you seem to have things covered.
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My opinion is...(meaning...feel free to disagree)...
If you're gonna run a solo campaign, run a SOLO campaign. Ditch the permanent GM-PC. Now, maybe 5 or 6 different GM-PC's spent a little of their time helping out, every once in a while, but I feel you run the risk of your perma-GM PC stealing the show.
My group is always 2 PC's and me. One of the PC's is my wife. In my opinion the less players you have the more power you can give them and the more rules you can and need to break.
You do need to be very carefull with the GM-PC who is "very optimized" where as she is "semi-optimized". You can really overshadow your only player and turn her off from the game if you are not carefull.
Also I would suggest try to let her make all the decisions on her own good or bad. If not she will feel like a spectator not the Main character. Ask me how I know....
Your main problem will be knowledges, I think, not combat
I second this. Having an 'advisor' type character who can fill in the Knowledges the PC lacks will help a great deal.
Additionally, Paizo is going to be releasing Mythic rules sometime this year; having looked the playtest rules over they seem perfect for parties of less than 4 PCs (for example, amazing initiative gives additional actions to the party).
I am going to be GMing a solo Reign of Winter campaign for my wife. To adjust the difficulty I am going to be running a GM-PC for her, allowing gestalt, giving max HP, six rolls of 5d6 dropping lowest two dice (she does not like pointbuy or I would give 25), and applying a weakened template to all the encounters which is basically the opposite of the advanced template so they lose 4 AC, 2 HP/HD and subtract 2 from all rolls and DCs. She is going to be playing a barbarian/oracle and the GM-PC will be a druid/ranger with an animal companion. I already rolled and got great stats for the druid/ranger who will be very optimized. Her character will probably be semi-optimized with advice from me. Instead of calculating experience which would get messed up with only two PCs and weakened encounters I am going to award levels using the suggestions in the book. Does this sound reasonable?
Be very careful with regards to the bolded text. You dont want your gm-pc to outshine her. Talk to her about maybe going barbarian druid, or oracle/summoner to have her have the pet instead of the npc. You dont want 2/3rds of the party actions and ALL of the other actions to be coming from you.
If anything just GIVE her barbarian an animal companion style buddy. You have one player it wont be unbalancing to just hand them a significant class feature even with them gestalting.