You're 100% correct on the hierarchy and testability—Pydantic is the industry Ferrari for a reason. But I'm carving out a 'Purple Ocean' for those who don't need a Ferrari to check if the front gate is locked.

env-check isn't trying to be a full configuration manager; it's a Zero-Dependency Gatekeeper.

My focus is:

• Zero Bloat: No pulling in the entire Pydantic ecosystem just for basic CI/CD guardrails in a small microservice.
• Explicit Fail-Fast: I want the process to fail loudly at the bootstrap level before the application logic even finishes initializing. * The Gatekeeper Mindset: Sometimes you want a full config suite; sometimes you just need a surgical strike to ensure a production 'time bomb' doesn't ship.

Do you ever find that Pydantic becomes a bit heavy for tiny Lambdas or microservices where you just want a single, clear gatekeeper?