Just to clarify, you should NOT run npm run dev in a production install. It should only be run when developing, and only when you’re modifying the core JS files (any JS files that aren’t theming, basically).
Whenever managing a production install, npm run build will create the necessary JS files, and will minify them to improve load times.
@marc since a lot of people may be just scanning this thread, would you mind updating your previous post? Normally it wouldn’t be a big deal, but npm run dev will build a massive, multi-mb JS file with hot reload and basically slow everything down on the backend. 