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My experience with Svelte has been similar. Svelte struck the right DX balance for me between helpful framework tools and features, but not far removed from vanilla JS, HTML, and CSS.

And sure, there is a build step. I have never felt like this was a problem with Svelte, but then I don't have experience working on a colossal Svelte app. Does it become one?

How so? Svelte provides a bunch of (very nice, no doubt) abstractions for building web UIs, and there's a build step. In that regard, Svelte is no different from other JS frameworks.

The hint how Svelte is different is in the word "different".

Svelte needs a build step, and with the introduction of runes for reactive state it's not that different from the rest of the crop (solid, react, vue).