Packing your basic web site with 50,000+ SLOC worth of run time dependencies is quite a different story. When you use a framework like react, or vue, or svelte, you're bringing in a massive dependency tree, and you're also changing the semantics of the application code from web standard code to framework specific code. Instead of being an expert on the standards, you have to become an expert in the framework. There are compromises being made either way.
I think that one important thing missing from this project is a templating engine of some kind. Questionable addition though, since you're then going to stop writing HTML and start writing whatever template language. And it's a greased path toward going with a framework.
Node is a runtime with a large standard library. The Java equivalent is the JVM plus some file system and network handling libraries.
A framework is a rich set of various abstractions designed to integrate in support of a design methodology.
"A simpler, more sustainable way of web development"
vs.
"Vanilla Prime is not meant to be easy"
I think it's a little naive to believe the JS build scene is somehow divorced from the JS runtime scene, when there's just as much complexity, churn, deep dependency chains and rapid obsolescence.
https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy/
I'm not sure if the author succeeded or not, but at least the goal is clear.
I agree that the JS build scene can be churning a lot as well (e.g. ESLint's recent config changes), that's why I tried to make everything as orthogonal and disposable as possible.