This document discusses using npm scripts for front-end automation and builds. It argues that npm scripts provide a simple, cross-compatible way to automate tasks like bundling, transpiling, testing and deployment without additional build tools. Npm scripts take advantage of existing CLI tools and allow decomposing complex automation into simple, composable tasks through lifecycle scripts and npm-run-all. Some tradeoffs are less extensibility and ongoing challenges with cross-platform support, but the approach aims to provide simpler mental models than alternative build systems.