I have heard of them but I've yet to try them. I guess I'm trying to figure out if there's some way to basically duplicate the idea of an SPA (using client-side

I have heard of them but I've yet to try them. I guess I'm trying to figure out if there's some way to basically duplicate the idea of an SPA (using client-side templating or whatever) without all the overhead. I think you're right, that static site generators fill that gap, or perhaps just server-side rendering with very little JavaScript on the frontend.