[matt89]

I believe you are overexaggerating. It has always been true that you needed some kind of local server when doing frontend development. There are multiple browser mechanism that would not work in any way other than when rendering html/css/js that was returned from a server.

Consequently a build tool (or dev-tool) that offers you a dev-server is really nothing weird in frontend development world. Same as 10-15 years ago when using jQuery and PHP and you would use XAMPP or LAMPP.

[finfinfin]

Just google “front-end tools” and look at the few top results. There are many tools for front-end development that are not build tools or have to run on the server.