So this is this week's recommendation? Last I checked it was grunt, or gulp, or something like that. I am forced to dabble with Node from time to time, and the effort to track what's this week's build chain is already too mentally taxing for me.

FWIW I mostly run terminal commands defined in package.json. I agree that keeping track of the fancy build tool du jour is best avoided, if possible.

I've used react-scripts for a few months. I have no idea how old it is, but it's pretty good. Maybe automatic reload isn't always working, but I can just reload the whole page if something is off and it's instantaneous.

These days it's easy to type into google "typescript starter" thanks to the excellent work of other people, which will inevitably include automatic reloading. You get better code pretty much for free.

I'm not trusting those starters will remain up to "modern standards" for longer than couple of months.