do you ever have an issue with TS source code changes not being respected by the compiler and you need to run rm the dist folder frequently and or run

npm run build

a lot? what is your solution for that?

This is all configured through package.json and tsconfig.json. If Pulumi is using dist/index.js instead of ./index.ts, it must be configured that way. Generally, you don't need a ./dist folder or to run tsc ever: by default, Pulumi's TS configuration uses ts-node and transpiles invisibly.

how does this look for my tsconfig? aiming for aws usage only.

{
  "extends": "./tsconfig.build.json",
  "compilerOptions": {
    "rootDir": ".",
    "noEmit": true,
    "strict": true,
    "outDir": "dist",
    "target": "es2016",
    "module": "commonjs",
    "moduleResolution": "node",
    "sourceMap": true,
    "experimentalDecorators": true,
    "pretty": true,
    "noFallthroughCasesInSwitch": true,
    "noImplicitReturns": true,
    "forceConsistentCasingInFileNames": true
  },
  "ts-node": {
    "swc": true
  },
  "include": [
    "."
  ],
  "exclude": [
    "node_modules",
    "dist"
  ],
  "files": [
    "src/index.ts"
  ]
}

Looks fairly different to mine, but I can't see your tsconfig.build.json. I think you need compiler option

"declaaration": true

, and

noEmit

probably shouldn't be there (or should be

false

). It's probably a good idea to specify

"types": ["node"]

and whichever

lib

value you use.