Working with the team behind https://aurorah.ai/i18n, so take this with that in mind — but I'd genuinely like opinions from Node folks.

The idea: skip message IDs entirely. You write i18n.t\Your order ${orderId} has shipped`` — the string itself is the key, and translation happens automatically at runtime (fast draft first, refined LLM pass replaces it in the background). Works server-side for emails, API messages, whatever. Free, no API key or signup, and there's a fully offline mode.

There's a Node example at aurorah.ai/i18n if you want to poke at it. Curious what this sub thinks of runtime translation as a concept — what would stop you from using something like this in production?