htmx is lower level than hotwire. it is a more direct extension of the HTML model, whereas turbo and other parts of hotwire have more magic. With htmx you would need to be disciplined about progressive enhancement, for example, because it gives you a lot of low level building blocks, but that's not the case with turbolinks. htmx does have

hx-boost

which acts like turbolinks to an extent, but it is not as complete and is not designed to be.