If I control both the backend and the frontend, yes. Server-only async components on top of layout/page component hierarchy, components -> DTO layer -> Prisma. Similar to this: https://nextjs.org/blog/security-nextjs-server-components-ac...

You still need API routes for stuff like data-heavy async dropdowns, or anything else that's hard to express as a pure URL -> HTML, but it cuts down the number of routes you need by 90% or more.

You’re just shifting the problem from HTTP to an adhoc protocol on top of it.

Yes but they’re also shifting the problem from one they explicitly have to deal with themselves to one the framework handles for them.

Personally I don’t like it but I do understand the appeal.

Maybe, but you go from one of the most tested protocol with a lot of tooling to another with not even a specification.