I agree. I've learnt my lesson and I will _NOT_ be running "npm install" on any greenfield projects anymore. I like the idea of Svelte but I do not like its dependency on npm/node.
At least with Vue I can just include the library into the page, with no mandatory build step.
The trade-off is performance. If you don't build your application, you're offloading work to the client.
In the case of Svelte, you're also likely increasing the size of your site, since it transpiles down to simple JS instructions rather than abstracted framework calls.
At least with Vue I can just include the library into the page, with no mandatory build step.