One working example is this:

  import * as garn from "https://garn.io/ts/v0.0.14/mod.ts";
  import * as pkgs from "https://garn.io/ts/v0.0.14/nixpkgs.ts";

  export const main: garn.Executable = garn.shell`${pkgs.jq}/bin/jq --version`;

Put that in a 'garn.ts' file and run 'garn run main' and you should see the version of 'jq' that you can get from our 'nixpkgs' module.

But yeah, I completely agree with the sentiment here. This is a rather cumbersome syntax to support a use-case that we don't even have examples for. So clearly the normal usage shouldn't force you to use template strings.