this feels like the missing primitive between classic full page reloads and heavy client hydration. if patching can preserve scroll position + focus + selection reliably, it unlocks a lot of low-js apps.

but the hard part is semantics: what happens to event handlers and component state when nodes are replaced. do you envision a standard way to mark stable ids (like keyed diffs) so patchers can do minimal DOM surgery?

Datastar solves this in a very elegant way, without needing to insert markers everywhere.