It trades off utility for managing scope creep. Keeping this code base tiny necessarily means that anything that uses it would need to write more code. If the point is a demonstration instead of a usable library, then that is good because it is much easier to follow without excess complexity.
Necessarily is a strong word; there are assuredly many users of this tool who find it sufficient in its scope as it is, based on the project activity. If a user needs significant feature additions they can write them as a separate tool that interacts with this one.
They don't.
The LoC limit exists as much to avoid scope creep and maintain focus as it is about anything else.