The king of "use JS frameworks, output pure HTML" is Astro. (https://astro.build/) It's basically an SSG where you can use a number of frameworks to write your components, and shipping any JS is explicitly opt-in.
I recently moved from Gatsby, which did that — and the transitions sure are instantaneous — to Astro, which outputs plain HTML pages. Each navigation is a request to the server. Yeah, they take a touch longer. But the response is tiny.
You could always `preload`?
I worry that Astro is adding too many features and trying to become Gatsby. No thanks!
As for Astro vs SvelteKit, I generally prefer Astro's approach to filesystem based routing (no +page etc.), I prefer it's MPA approach to the clientside routing SvelteKit and others use OOTB, I like that it's very tailored towards content and being an SSG (content collections, MD and MDX support ootb, currently experimental automatic image optimization), and the "integrations" are a huge time-saver. Some common ones you can add with `astro add`, and many others are just a quick config edit away. I recently built a pretty performant portfolio site with Astro in a single day using DecapCMS and UnoCSS, both as integrations, all the client had to do was accept the invite from Netlify Identity and start adding content to their site!
I just prefer the DX of Astro and MPA routing instead of client-side.