Isn't that what Svelte was aiming to do? It's moved on a ways since then, but you can still see the fundamentals in its demos: https://svelte.dev/playground/hello-world

That’s a good comparison — Svelte also started from the “write less, ship less” idea, and I have a lot of respect for it.

The big difference is that Svelte achieves that by compiling away the framework, whereas Dagger.js avoids compilation entirely. You don’t install a CLI, you don’t run a build — you literally drop a <script> from a CDN and wire up directives in plain HTML. It’s closer to Alpine/htmx in that sense, but with a focus on working alongside Web Components.

So in spirit, yes — both try to reduce overhead. Svelte optimizes post-build output; Dagger.js tries to remove the build step altogether.

Here is a dagger.js version Hello world demo：https://codepen.io/dagger8224/pen/raOXxee?editors=1010