html.

Two unrelated rebuilds. A macOS kanban app in Rust, three websites with HTML marker pairs. Arrived at the same primitive: one binary, one job, no runtime to babysit.

Most CMSs treat HTML as a build output. Freedom CMS edits the HTML file directly via contenteditable, autocommits to git. No database, no schema, no build step.

A 200-line Rust binary that does literal substitution between HTML comments. Smaller than every templating system I've used.

For solo developers and agent-driven sites, vanilla HTML beats React, Next, and Astro. The framework tax is hidden until you remove it.