[ycombinatornews]

Snowpack, parcel, esbuild. Minimal setup each. YMMV based on how you plan to distribute the build results (package, site or app) after.

[vlod]

Maybe I'm not getting it, but I just set up an express.js app this last weekend with nothing much more than tsc (typescript) and ts-node.

Do you need all that other stuff for a simple node app?

[toastercat]

You are getting it. Use less and smaller tools if possible. And if you're on Node 18, node comes with a watch mode built in that you can leverage.

You can alternatively use esbuild to handle the TypeScript compilation since it is faster than tsc for that, and just keep tsc around for the typechecker.

[toastercat]

Snowpack has been unmaintained for years now, and its homepage actively recommends people switch to Vite.