Tested the hypothesis that cached base64 images were bloating TanStack Query and
Redis. They are not, measured on a loaded 4-tab session:
base64 data-URLs, server heap 0.01 MiB (2 strings)
base64 blobs, browser heap 0.01 MiB (7 strings)
Redis total 2.17 MB
image bytes in Redis none - image-proxy stores URL + headers only
What the server heap is actually made of (141 MiB used): 41.4 MiB is bundled
JavaScript source retained as strings, ~29% of the heap. The memory is the code, not
cached data — which is why every cache-tuning idea in the fix catalog measured at
zero, and why serverExternalPackages was the only lever that moved idle memory.
7.86 MiB of that is literal duplicate copies: the same module inlined into several
Turbopack chunks and retained once per chunk. @ioredis/commands' command table was in
10 chunks and resident 6 times (2.07 MiB wasted), so it is now external — ioredis is
already external and owns it as a direct dependency, so it stays traced.
Recorded as bundle hygiene, NOT a memory win: idle 89.7 -> 89.4 MiB is inside noise,
and board-loaded/peak deltas were smaller than the run-to-run spread (one "before" run
read 220.6 MiB against 169-173 for identical code).
got and @octokit/request-error duplicate just as badly but were deliberately left
bundled: they are only transitive dependencies, and a check inside the image showed
got is not traced into node_modules, so externalising it would have turned a bundled
module into a require that resolves to nothing — a possible MODULE_NOT_FOUND for zero
measured gain.
analyze-heap-strings.mjs buckets a snapshot's strings by what they are, which is what
made "37 MiB of strings" actionable instead of just alarming.
Verified: 28/28 widgets render, auth control passes, zero module-not-found in the
container log, typecheck clean. pnpm test 1794/1795 with two different Testcontainers
flakes across runs (pi-hole, sabnzbd); both pass 18/18 in isolation.
Thomas Camlong
f707f64333