The minimal text editor shipped with Windows is now Edit https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/edit/
I didn't remember that they'd shipped that. I remember reading about it but I ever tried it. My hot take, after 10 minutes, is that it's frustrating and not at all a replacement for Notepad. (Fortunately you can uninstall the shitty "Windows Notepad" and the real notepad.exe takes over.)
This new "Edit" is completely tone-deaf in that it doesn't keep the keybindings from Notepad (i.e. no CTRL-H for find/replace, no F5 for the current date/time). You can't turn off the status bar or the line numbers. It doesn't follow the OS theme (instead pretending to be a text-mode application). It tries to be "helpful" with indentation.
At least they bothered to get Find Next with F3 right.
It would have been immensely better if they'd just ported the old MS-DOS EDIT / QBASIC over to Windows.
It isn't minimal since it depends on a terminal