The whole point is that you choose an arbitrary thing to treat as a dealbreaker that doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. "npm install jquery" would have given you the exact same result you have, except it would have violated your dealbreaker. It just doesn't seem particularly logical to me.

To be honest, if you're going for "as simple as possible" there's no reason to use jQuery at all these days, it's a waste. Modern browsers have perfectly capable APIs!