But that's yet-another-layer-of-abstraction with its own set of tradeoffs (e.g. I think CSS-in-JS is a trap, which seems to be the way for Lit; slots are still a thing; no SSR nor progressive enhancement; decorators!?!?!; etc.) which builds on top of what already feels like the wrong abstraction in the first place, only to provide React-like capabilities.

At that point why not just use React? What do I get from using Lit instead?

I don't personally mind writing web components by hand, but for those who want something easier, lit.dev is popular. There's also slim.js and Stencil if you don't mind a compile step.

The design of web components could be better, but I much prefer them to the true nightmare that React development has become. And the api is stable, which means a longevity that frameworks don't have.

| no SSR nor progressive enhancement

I have not been impressed by React SSR in the wild in terms of progressive enhancement. This seems like more of marketing promise than a real world experience. Do you have any examples to link?