this idea is brilliant, hats off to you

i have been doing this sorta unofficially for a minute without considering it "build golf", mostly due to the fact that NPM is nightmare fuel and javascript build tooling has been out of control for a loonng time

the rules for capystack at the moment go something like

• don't depend on any packages, and if you have to, those packages should have no dependencies
• don't depend on react, just use boring ass string templating
• don't depend on typescript, just run plain ol dynamic js
• build your own minimalist dependency libraries if you have to

as a result, i can mostly just install nodejs pinned to a nonsloppy version and go to town; package.json can have some simple build-scripty kickstarts to run node somescript.sh or whatever

i have cobbled together some non-totally-embarrassing projects this way

you can judge me for javascript, i like some other languages more (hi F#!) but they require so much hateful ecosystem that i just can't be bothered