In most npm projects, you don't depend on C extensions. For python projects that don't depend on C extensions, you already have your "just works" experience with poetry.

If you really want a "just works" experience when dealing with C extensions, you should freeze your development environment one layer up (e.g. VMs, vagrant images, what have you) so that you can always successfully install and compile your C extensions because the underlying system is also kept under version control. And this is independent of whether or not you are working on a Poetry or an NPM based project.

It's not that hard. I suspect that you're just used to simpler conditions.