[juliantellez]

What. Weft turns a template and a data object into a string. Plain text passes through unchanged. A tag such as {{ name }} renders the value of that name from the data.

Why. This is step 1 of the path. The repository held only a readme, so this step stands the package up: package.json, a strict tsconfig.json, vitest, and a pipeline job that runs the same command on every pull request. Node runs the TypeScript directly, so there is no build step.

The parser returns text and value pieces only. Dotted paths, loops, conditions and HTML escaping come in the later steps.

One thing goes beyond the step, and it is small. A name that is not in the data throws. The design says a missing value is an error, never an empty string. Without that guard this step renders the word undefined, which is the failure mode step 2 exists to stop.

Proof. npm test reports 12 passed in 383 ms. I mutated three things and watched each one go red: the trim of the tag name (8 tests failed), the missing name guard (1 test failed), and the trailing text piece (6 tests failed). Each source file is byte identical to the version before the mutation.