How I Cut 40KB from My Edge Bundle with Zero-Dep Utils

Michael — Thu, 29 Oct 2026 03:57:34 +0000

When I started building edge services on Cloudflare Workers, I kept hitting the same problem: bundle size.

Every "lightweight" utility pulled in dependencies. zod (1.1 MB), p-retry (7 KB + deps), axios-retry (requires axios). On Workers where cold starts matter, every KB counts.

So I built three zero-dependency replacements:

1. fetch-retry-jitter (1.6 KB gzip)

Replaces: p-retry, axios-retry, custom retry loops

import { fetchRetry } from 'fetch-retry-jitter';

const response = await fetchRetry('https://api.example.com/data', {
  retries: 3,
  baseDelayMs: 300,
  maxDelayMs: 5000,
  circuitBreaker: { failureThreshold: 5, resetTimeoutMs: 30000 },
  timeoutMs: 5000,
  deduplicate: true,
});

Features:

Exponential backoff with full jitter (AWS recommended)
Circuit breaker (closed/open/half-open states)
Request deduplication — coalesces identical in-flight requests
Retry-After header support (seconds + HTTP-date)
Per-attempt timeoutMs + retryIf predicate
AbortSignal support + stream body protection
1.6 KB gzip, zero dependencies

2. env-assert-typed (528 B gzip)

Replaces: Zod (1.1 MB), Valibot (188 KB), Joi (50 KB+)

import { envAssert } from 'env-assert-typed';

const env = envAssert({
  PORT: { type: 'number', required: true },
  HOST: { type: 'string', default: '0.0.0.0' },
  DEBUG: { type: 'boolean' },
  REGION: { type: 'string', required: true, choices: ['us', 'eu'] },
  API_KEY: { type: 'string', required: true, secret: true },
});

Features:

Automatic TypeScript inference — required → T, default → T, optional → T | undefined
Discriminated union schema — compile errors on mismatched default/choices types
coerce — custom string→type parsing
refine — cross-field validation with access to all env
refineAsync — async refinement hook
transform — post-coercion transformation
secret — marks sensitive values for error masking
Factory functions for defaults
528 B gzip, zero dependencies

3. ci-diff-changed (Action, ~80 lines bash)

Replaces tj-actions/changed-files (Node container + API calls)

- uses: Yearnless/ci-diff-changed@v1
  id: diff
  with:
    base-ref: origin/main
    pattern: 'packages/(api|web)/'

Outputs JSON array of changed files — perfect for conditional CI in monorepos.

Results

Before	After	Savings
zod (1.1 MB)	env-assert-typed	99.9% smaller
p-retry (7 KB + deps)	fetch-retry-jitter	~75% smaller
tj-actions/changed-files (container)	ci-diff-changed (bash)	No container

Total bundle reduction: ~40 KB → ~2 KB (95% reduction)

Why Zero-Dep Matters on the Edge

Cold starts — Every KB adds milliseconds to cold start
Bundle limits — Workers free tier: 1 MB, paid: 10 MB
Supply chain — Zero deps = zero supply chain risk
Auditability — Read the entire source in 5 minutes

Try Them

npm i fetch-retry-jitter env-assert-typed
# GitHub Action:
# uses: Yearnless/ci-diff-changed@v1

All three include:

✅ Provenance-signed npm packages
✅ Full TypeScript inference
✅ 100% test coverage
✅ Zero dependencies
✅ Works on Node, Bun, Deno, Cloudflare Workers, browsers

Repos:

Starter templates using them:

Built while learning in public. Feedback welcome!