Build steps are realistically speaking inevitable because of minification, tree-shaking, etc. which is not even a big deal these days with tools like esbuild. F

Build steps are realistically speaking inevitable because of minification, tree-shaking, etc. which is not even a big deal these days with tools like esbuild. For a "true" DOM-first component reactive system just use Web Components and any Signals library out there and you're good.