angular-cli - run index.html directly from dist?

You should not just open this file. Web server is what you need for production usage.

If you want to serve build version of application using built in server, you can use ng serve --prod command.

After build Angular with ng build, from the current directory we use http-server ./dist. http-server is module run server nodeJS.

Reference: https://www.npmjs.com/package/http-server

ng build <br>
http-server ./dist