Most behavioral patterns favor composition over inheritance. Why does Template Method deliberately do the opposite?

Composition is usually preferred because it keeps classes loosely coupled and lets behavior be swapped at runtime, but Template Method's entire goal is the opposite of swappable — it needs to guarantee that a fixed sequence of steps can never be rearranged by anything using it, while still allowing exactly one specific step to vary. Inheritance, paired with a final orchestrating method and a protected abstract or hook method for the varying step, directly enforces that constraint at compile time: a subclass literally cannot override the sequencing method, and it must (for abstract steps) or may (for hooks) supply its own version of the customizable step. Composition could not enforce that same guarantee nearly as directly, since a composed strategy object could always be called in the wrong order by whatever holds it. This is a case where inheritance's tighter coupling is genuinely the right tool for the job rather than a design smell.