Indeed the `__format__` style offers a lot more options (see https://pyformat.info/).

Regarding performance you make an interesting point.

One possible solution is to allow f-strings _only_ if there are no args/kwargs.
In that one case formatting would explicitly be skipped. 
This could be represented at type-level with an overload:

    # case: Logger does formatting. Only literal string template allowed.
    @overload
    def debugf(msg: Literal[str], *args, exc_info: bool = False, **kwargs):
        # wrap

    # case: User does formatting. No args/kwargs allowed.
    @overload
    def debugf(msg: str, *, exc_info: bool = False):
        # wrap `msg` in something that will not allow further formatting.