Sounds like you are going through similar struggles as a few backend developers I had trying out htmx. Years of muscle memory with returning JSON and letting the frontend (javascript/jquery) to handle the html.

They were making a big deal with this change. In the end the change is rather minimal. The outcome is reduced javascript code and more server side html templates. Pretty much most of the code is now handled on the server side. Just organise the html templates!

Pseudo example

Instead of :-

<code>

// returning as Json

[Get]

Response GetUser(int id) {

   var user = getUser(id);

   return ToJson(user);

}

</code>

You are just doing :-

<code>

// returning as HTML

[Get]

Response GetUser(int id) {

   var user = getUser(id);

   return View("som-user-template", user);

}

</code>

I don't know what 'hooks' you need, but whatever they are doing you can move them over to returning/updating section of html on the screen with htmx.