> it polluted my codebase

HTMX is less noisy if you integrate it into your backend framework.

A contact of mine build a python/flask app. To simplify coding, he wrote a file to extend the flask framework to support the HTMX patterns he needed with just a single line of boilerplate. Took him about a day, his team is happy with the results.

It's not less noisy, you just move the noise to the backend