Micropython does run directly on the hardware, though. It's a bare-metal binary, no OS. Which is a different claim to running the python code you give it 'directly'.

Well, runing python on Raspian, you could toggle a pin at maximum a couple of KHz, not near the 2 MHz you can do with this project. Also it claims predictability, so I assume the time jitter is much less, which is a very important parameter for real time applications.

PyXL is a bit more direct :)

Huh? MicroPython literally does exactly that: You copy over Python source(!) code and it runs on the Pico.