How does the babel plugin fit in?

[djMax]

We have a monorepo React Native Typescript project. I'm debugging why babel plugins don't work, and I think the obvious answer is "babel is not involved anywhere." SO, another dev has mentioned that some of the more advanced RN-reanimated features don't work with our project and we get warnings about needing the babel plugin, such as useSharedValue. This all makes sense, I guess, but two questions:

1. How would one restore the babel features in a Typescript world where Babel is not involved?
2. Am I wrong, and Babel is somehow invoked by Metro?