Yes I come to the same conclusion and HTMX is the good candidate to reduce JS bundle size.

Rails 7 launched with Hotwired as the default UI system.

There is also multiple other similar tools that favor HTML first:

• Unpoly - an opinionated higher level alternative to htxm/hotwired turbo
• Hotwired Stimulus - for small augmentations
• Alpine.js - similar but looks pretty much like Vue
• Hyperscript - a better scripting layer for html