The --watch and --live-reload works on change detection, and they are usable with serve command. But is there any configuration so that rebuild and reload happens only when I save my changes?
I think that the problem comes from your IDE. --watch rebuild the app when some file change, so if your IDE save when the focus change (Like Jetbrains IDE Collections such WebStorm), your app is rebuilt.
Change that option in your IDE and everything must work like you want :)