talkDOM: A Tiny Message-Passing Runtime for the DOM

Modern frontend development often assumes that building interactive web interfaces requires a heavy JavaScript framework. Over the years, frameworks have grown increasingly complex, introducing components, state management systems, build pipelines, and large runtime bundles. https://github.com/eringen/talkdom But the web already has a powerful platform: HTML + the DOM + HTTP . The idea behind talkDOM is simple: What if DOM elements could send messages to each other? Instead of wiring JavaScript handlers everywhere, HTML becomes a small message-passing language . Elements act as senders and receivers , and interactions are expressed declaratively. The result is a tiny runtime (only a few kilobytes) that enables fetching data, updating DOM fragments, composing pipelines, polling endpoints, and controlling navigation — all from HTML. The Core Idea In talkDOM, elements communicate using Smalltalk-style messages . A sender contains a sender attribute: <button sender= "posts get:/posts | lis