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Would it be enough to have <body> hidden using an inline style in the initial html response and when everything is loaded, one would remove the style using javascript?

Many sites do something like that in practice. The problem is the extra 500ms of parse+eval time for your JS bundle influences user behavior a lot on the margin, so it’s better to not force the user to wait.

How hard would it be to use JS for progressive enhancement instead making your website depend on it to display simple text and images.

Practically only cordova does these for now. But it's a native app so of course it can do whatever it want.