The syntax and overall paradigm of Aurelia 2 is the same. The team avoided where possible a repeat of what Angular did to the community with the transition to Angular 2. Most notable differences are routing and dynamic composition.
with aurelia 1 there was a downloadable archive (which still exists) that had everything bundled that i could just unpack and it was ready to run. it didn't even need a server to host the files if i was running a browser on the same machine.
i want to be able to develop the application without using browser-sync or build steps and it appears the version you linked promises that.
but i also want to be able to host and develop the application completely offline without any need for internet access.
the reason for that is that i am using the application (in production as it were) while i am developing new features or fix bugs that i discover while using it.
running the transpiler in the browser doesn't bother me, it's been fast enough so far.
i would use aurelia-cli if i could figure out how to make it build a development version without browser-sync and without transpiling and compressing the code before it is deployed.
There is a build system free version documented here. Is this what you mean? https://docs.aurelia.io/developer-guides/cheat-sheet#script-...
If you need any help porting it over, just let me know.