Git web interfaces should be Bring Your Own, really. I never bother using those as I can have a consistent interface inside emacs. Why should the repository owner choose which interface you view it on?
I really don't want to have to pull an entire repo to check something out. I read open source code waaaaaaaaaaay more than I have any need to actually run it or do anything to it locally.
Shallow clones are really useful for that:
git clone —-depth 1 …
Partial/shallow clone is a git feature.
Because most self-hosted Git services like Gogs and Gitea include features not part of git, such as pull requests, releases, and issues, which require some kind of database.
That's an entirely different concern. If people would not shove their repository alongside those features, instead of relaying those through a standalone and documented manner, I would probably also be easily tracking those features inside my editor.