Zero-build frontend development Patterns for building production-quality web applications without build tools, bundlers, or complex toolchains. Picking a stack Three current zero-build approaches, each with different trade-offs: | Stack | When | Bundle size impact | |---|---|---| | React via esm.sh + htm | Component-heavy SPAs, existing React mental model, Tailwind styling | 50 KB gzipped (React + ReactDOM + htm) | | htmx 2.x + server-rendered HTML | CRUD apps, traditional MPA flow, want server-side state of truth | 14 KB gzipped (htmx alone) | | Alpine.js 3.x + plain HTML | Light interactivi…