Foreword {.unnumbered}

I didn't set out to build a framework. I set out to escape one — or at least escape the gravitational pull of the endless build pipeline.

After decades of building things for the web, my machine had become a storage exhibit of Node versions, Python versions, shims, wrappers, and dependency folders with the mass of small moons. Not because any of it was bad. Build tools are fine. For big projects, they're downright amazing. But somewhere along the way, we normalized the idea that even the simplest experiment needed a pipeline, a bundler, a transpiler, and a twelve-step hydration ritual before it could say "Hello, World."

That friction bothered me.

I wanted the feeling I had back in the early days: the joy of dropping a