image-pulse

image-pulse

Find oversized, unoptimised and wrongly formatted images in your built site, before they slow down your Largest Contentful Paint.

Images are usually the heaviest part of a page and the most common LCP element. image-pulse scans the HTML and image files in your static build output (Astro, Hugo, Eleventy, Jekyll, Next.js export, Docusaurus, plain HTML), reads each image's real dimensions from its file header, and compares them with how the page uses it: a 2400px photo shown at 600px, a 400 kB JPEG with no AVIF or WebP alternative, a hero without width and height, a 2 MB animated GIF.

CLI, library and GitHub Action. Node.js 18+, zero runtime dependencies. Works on any static build output (Astro, Next.js output: 'export', Eleventy, Hugo, Jekyll, Docusaurus, VitePress, plain HTML) and runs offline: point it at the folder your build writes. By Louis Wright.

Features

• Bytes: per-image budget (--max-kb, default 250 kB; above 1 MB is high severity).
• Dimensions: intrinsic width vs displayed width (from width or sizes), allowing 2.5× for high-DPI screens; aspect-ratio mismatches between attributes and the file.
• Formats: JPEG/PNG without an AVIF or WebP alternative (<picture><source type> or srcset), opaque PNG photos, animated GIFs, baseline JPEGs, SVGs carrying editor metadata.
• Responsive markup: large images without srcset, w-descriptor srcsets without sizes, <img> without width/height (layout shift).
• Local and fast: dimension parsing for PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP (VP8/VP8L/VP8X), AVIF/HEIF and SVG with no native modules; external images get markup checks only.

Scope

image-pulse does not re-encode images or fetch remote ones, and it does not check broken image links (use static-link-sentinel) or loading="lazy" placement (see lazy-pulse).

Rules

Install and run

npx image-pulse dist
npx image-pulse public --max-kb 150 --fail-on medium
npx image-pulse _site --format sarif > images.sarif

Pages are mapped to URLs the way static hosts serve them: index.html → /, blog/index.html → /blog/, about.html → /about.html (or /about with --clean-urls). Pass --base-url with your public URL, or let it be inferred from canonical / og:url tags. Meta-refresh redirect stubs and 404.html are skipped. X-Robots-Tag and Link headers are read from Netlify/Cloudflare _headers and vercel.json.

Sample output

image-pulse — https://example.com
1 page(s), 5 image(s), 475 KB

MEDIUM   img/anim.gif img/anim.gif is an animated GIF of 98 KB [image-animated-gif]
MEDIUM   img/photo.jpg img/photo.jpg is 140 KB (400×300 jpeg), over the 100 KB budget [image-heavy]
MEDIUM   img/shot.png img/shot.png is 169 KB (240×240 png), over the 100 KB budget [image-heavy]
MEDIUM   index.html:3 <img src="/img/photo.jpg"> has no width/height [image-missing-dimensions]
MEDIUM   index.html:3 img/photo.jpg (JPEG, 140 KB) has no AVIF/WebP alternative [image-legacy-format]
MEDIUM   index.html:4 /img/banner.jpg is 2400px wide but displayed at 600px (4.0×, 49 KB) [image-oversized-dimensions]

Options

image-pulse 1.0.0 — find oversized and unoptimised images in your built site

Usage: image-pulse [site-dir] [options]

Site
      --base-url <url>        Public URL of the site, e.g. https://example.com (default: inferred from canonical/og:url)
      --include <globs>       Only check these pages (file or URL path globs, comma-separated)
      --exclude <globs>       Skip these pages
      --clean-urls            Pages are served without .html (about.html -> /about)
Images
      --max-kb <n>             Byte budget per image file in KB (default 250)
      --max-scale <n>          Allowed intrinsic/display width ratio (default 2.5)

Common
  -c, --config <file>     JSON config (default: .image-pulse.json or "imagePulse" in package.json)
  -f, --format <fmt>      text (default) | json | sarif | markdown
      --json <file>       Also write a JSON report
      --sarif <file>      Also write SARIF 2.1.0
      --markdown <file>   Also write Markdown (e.g. for a job summary)
      --fail-on <sev>     critical | high | medium | low | info | none (default: high)
      --list-rules        Print rules and default severities
      --no-fixes          Hide fix suggestions in text output
      --no-color          Disable colours
  -v, --version / -h, --help

Exit codes: 0 = passed, 1 = findings at or above --fail-on, 2 = usage, config or read error.

Configuration and allowlist

Options can live in .image-pulse.json (or a "imagePulse" key in package.json, or --config <file>):

{
  "failOn": "medium",
  "severity": {
    "image-heavy": "low"
  },
  "allowlist": [
    {
      "rule": "image-heavy",
      "subject": "img/annual-report-cover.jpg",
      "reason": "Print-quality download, linked not embedded",
      "expires": "2027-03-31"
    }
  ],
  "maxBytes": 204800,
  "maxScale": 2,
  "srcsetMinWidth": 1000,
  "exclude": [
    "/admin/**"
  ]
}

• severity changes a rule's severity, or turns it "off".
• allowlist entries suppress matching findings. Each needs a reason and matches on any combination of rule, file, subject (globs with *) and match (a substring of the message). Add expires (YYYY-MM-DD) so the exception is time-boxed: once it lapses the finding comes back along with an allowlist-expired finding (medium). Entries that no longer match anything are reported as allowlist-unused (info).

Config can also set baseUrl, include, exclude and cleanUrls. The config file is looked up in the site directory first, then in the current directory, so .image-pulse.json can live at your repository root. Other keys: maxBytes, maxScale, srcsetMinWidth (default 800), legacyMinBytes (default 30 kB), gifBytes (default 100 kB), plus baseUrl, include, exclude and cleanUrls.

Output and exit codes

• --format text (default), json, sarif (SARIF 2.1.0 for GitHub code scanning) or markdown (for job summaries and PR comments). --json, --sarif and --markdown write extra report files in the same run.
• --fail-on <severity> sets the threshold (critical, high, medium, low, info, none; default high).
• Exit codes: 0 passed, 1 findings at or above --fail-on, 2 usage, config or read error.

GitHub Action

permissions:
  contents: read
  security-events: write   # only needed for the SARIF upload
jobs:
  image-pulse:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@11d5960a326750d5838078e36cf38b85af677262 # v4
        with: { persist-credentials: false }
      - run: npm ci && npm run build   # produce the static site first
      - uses: MrLouisWright/image-pulse@v1
        with:
          path: dist
          fail-on: high
          sarif: image-pulse.sarif
      - uses: github/codeql-action/upload-sarif@v3
        if: always()
        with: { sarif_file: image-pulse.sarif }

The action runs the bundled CLI with Node 20; it has no dependencies to install. Pin it to a commit SHA if your policy requires it.

Library

import { check, imageInfo } from "image-pulse";
imageInfo(readFileSync("hero.jpg")); // { format: "jpeg", width: 1600, height: 900, progressive: true }
const report = check("dist", { maxBytes: 200 * 1024 });

Types are included.

Requirements

Node.js 18 or newer. Zero runtime dependencies.

Support

If this project is useful to you, you can support its development with a donation: Buy me a coffee. It helps keep these tools maintained, documented and free for everyone.

Credit (optional)

Free to use under MIT, no attribution required. If image-pulse helps you, a link back is appreciated:

<a href="https://louiswright.co.uk">Built with image-pulse by Louis Wright</a>

[![Built with image-pulse by Louis Wright](https://img.shields.io/badge/built%20with-image--pulse-blue)](https://louiswright.co.uk)

Licence

MIT © Louis Wright (Louis Wright)