The is exactly what HTMX does and it works: allow returning a HTML response and statically annotating a part of the DOM to be replaced with that. Granted, this

The is exactly what HTMX does and it works: allow returning a HTML response and statically annotating a part of the DOM to be replaced with that. Granted, this requires JavaScript on the front end, but it's a framework that can be shared between different websites, so you're not writing any custom JavaScript for your site.