KDE apps are not included in the plasma by default. Plasma itself is very lightweight.

Sorry, I was referring to the bundle that Asahi Linux is using. I had a bad time trying to uninstall each package one-by-one and decided to just start with a minimal install instead.

Same on FreeBSD. It comes with the basics. Some apps like Krita or Kdenlive are pretty heavy but also incredibly powerful. So I have opted to install them but they are not in the base package.

I think some small apps like Konsole, Kate, Dolphin and KWallet come in the default install but you can't really do without them.

It does have some visual bloat when you compare it to modern tiling wms, though.

True but it's much more than a WM. Especially a tiling one which are designed to be super basic :)