Hi,

Yes, you can skip the build process and use the precompiled default assets(in the dist folder of the unpacked theme folder) for your project.

In case if you need to customize colors,styles or add/remove plugins you will need to recompile your assets folder with Gulp or Webpack.

Please note that the build tools are required only in the development environment just to compile the assets when the source folder files are modified. In the hosting/server deployment you will only need the compile assets, no need to install the build tools dependencies there.

Regards.