How to solve node-gyp issues
Root cause
node-gyp allows to pull natively compiled modules onto node.js, in this case using C++, and the issue with windows comes about with running C++ on a sandbox. The compiling tools have been removed from Windows SDK so third party tools are necessary in order to run.
Possible steps
Either install windows build tools globally, on a higher level console
bash npm install --global --production windows-build-tools
or follow the manual steps on the node-gyp page
https://github.com/nodejs/node-gyp
The fallback, in the particular case of the 8.1 SDK missing is on VS2015 (with windows global tools installed, unknown if it affects or not) create a C++ project, which will install the tools, around 3GBs of extra space needed.
sources
https://github.com/nodejs/node-gyp/issues/629
https://github.com/nodejs/node-gyp/issues/629#issuecomment-151018292
https://github.com/felixrieseberg/windows-build-tools/issues/9