> You actually don't need hot reload or hot module replacement. esbuild is so fast you can just reload the page and it reloads instantly.

You don’t actually need any of these tools. But HMR is useful not because build time is slow (even if it often is), but because dev/validation iteration is slow too. TDD can improve some of that, but when you’re iterating on something interactive and want to validate the experience of it (or any number of other circumstances where manual validation provides value), having your setup state preserved can mean the difference between split second validation (with fast tooling) and completely breaking flow.