A bit confused at this, NPM is just a package manager / distribution mechanism, not a framework. Totally fair if you don't want to publish for all the package managers, though for Javascript there's only a few that are relevant. NPM has been around for a decade.
It's an out-of-language packaging/distribution framework (and it's not the only one). It's not part of the JS standards.
My comments above have been edited to reframe our stance on npm and frameworks in general.
If you changed the word "framework" to "toolchain" in your post I think it would make a lot more sense to people.
Fair point but the edit window has passed ;). For the sake of clarity for those still following along: "framework," in the context of my above comments, includes any non-formally-standardized tools or APIs which are built atop the standardized core.