It's certainly not super obvious to setup but there are ways to use PlayCanvas with local setup[1]. I have Redirector[2] rules in my browser and that basically handles it. So with some tinkering you can have hot module replacement and front-end libraries integrated for a very smooth and web-dev-y modern workflow.

[1] https://github.com/thisredone/coffeescript-playcanvas-templa... [2] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/redirector/ocgpenf...