[leemour]

Task

Ship max as an esbuild bundle built by cli-base's shared cli-dev bundle (0.65.0), as tg does since 0.100.0 (owner-approved rollout).

Why

A command imports about a thousand module files before it does any work; the bundle loads a few dozen. tg's start halved (cli-testing tg-bundle).

What

• build: tsc --build --force && cli-dev bundle --bin dist/bin/max.js --external ws; esbuild 0.28.2 as a devDependency (cli-base's optional peer).
• dist/bin/max.js becomes the loader: it answers --version, turns the compile cache on, and for serve, watch and mcp serve (also after a flag) preloads every chunk so an in-place upgrade cannot pull one from under a running server.
• Smoke: the bin starts the bundle, the loader preloads only chunks that exist, its --version equals the bundle's, skills and document readers are found, and the store opens where a read needs no account. smoke:node (new) runs in CI; smoke:bun runs it under Bun.
• TESTING.md and a changelog line.

Testing

Results follow in a comment: identity under npm and pnpm, the upgrade test with and without a flag before mcp serve, timings.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[leemour]

Results (cli-core 0.469.0, cli-base 0.65.0)

Installed from npm pack tarballs; before = main (tsc only), after = this branch.

• Identity: 26 commands plus an MCP session (smoke mcp serve), under npm and pnpm: byte-identical after normalising paths, run ids and timings; the only difference is the stack frames in a failed run's record. All 16 rewritten asset paths exist in both layouts.
• Upgrade with an MCP server running, bundle A → B with every chunk renamed: smoke mcp serve and smoke --quiet mcp serve both preloaded (139 bundle loads each) and answered all 9 calls after the upgrade; none crashed.
• Timing, warm, median of 10, taskset -c 0-3, load 2.5–3.0: --version 37 → 19 ms; --help 452 → 221 (−51%); messages list --help 436 → 211 (−52%); bench chats list --offline 469 → 246 (−48%).
• Package: 0.48 → 2.99 MB to download.
• smoke:node and smoke:bun pass.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code