From what I could tell the sweet spot for HTMX would be much more targeted at adding some JS magic to an existing backend server based web app (i.e. Django, Flask, Rails) where the developer primarily is a Python/Ruby, HTML/DOM and database expert and doesn't want to get bogged down into supporting a full fledged frontend like React, Angular, etc. to add some UX flair to their mostly CRUD based app.
Native apps (i.e. iOS, Android, MacOS) purely in HTMX is probably not its sweet spot. Probably Electron (or Godot) would be better.
Question. Have you ever seen someone use htmx in a capacitor/cordova app? I would rather use htmx like I have been instead of a different tech (like Hyperview)
IMO the killer feature of htmx is quick prototyping. You can have an application really quick, only with some html templates in views. Maybe tailwind too, and you can skip css and js.
Funny you mention turbo/hotwire, I actually encountered a bug almost immediately after upgrading to Rails 7 where for some reason HTML5 video tags would work after a real page load but would not (with no error messages or anything) after a hotwire/turbo-"page"-"reload". I tore hotwire and turbo out and it worked.
Oh, this was only on iOS and macos Safari, of course. Worked fine on FF/chrome.
Native apps (i.e. iOS, Android, MacOS) purely in HTMX is probably not its sweet spot. Probably Electron (or Godot) would be better.