Consider timing diagnostics and adapters for slow repeated CLI startup

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Assessment

Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Newbie friendliness
35/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Needs clarification
Activity status
Quiet
Tech stack
node.js, typescript
Domain
cli, performance, testing-qa

Research direction

No file or test is named in the issue. First reproduce a repeated-command suite and compare startup time with output-matching overhead; then scope one direction—timing diagnostics, documentation, or an adapter. Done should include clear guidance or diagnostics, plus preserved argv, cwd, environment, streams, and exit-code behavior for any adapter.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Some CLI golden suites run the same command many times, and for TypeScript/Node CLIs a
single cold start can be around a second. When a tryscript file or suite has many console
blocks, that startup cost can dominate the run even when tryscript's own matching overhead
is small.

It would be useful to consider support or guidance here without changing tryscript's core
shell semantics.

Possible directions:

  • Document how to diagnose startup-bound suites versus output-matching overhead.
  • Add optional timing diagnostics, such as per-command duration and a slowest-commands
    summary.
  • Provide guidance for CLI authors on reducing startup cost: lazy imports, prebuilt JS,
    Node compile cache, avoiding heavy barrel imports, etc.
  • Consider an advanced adapter/lifecycle pattern for CLIs that can safely run multiple
    invocations through one prestarted process while preserving argv, cwd, env, stdin,
    stdout/stderr, and exit-code behavior.

The adapter idea is not universally safe because many CLIs rely on process isolation or
global state. Even if tryscript does not implement daemonization directly, docs and timing
visibility would help users see where slow golden tests are spending time and choose the
right mitigation.

Dominant language
TypeScript
Stars
13
Forks
1
Avg merge
3h 38m
Merged PRs (30d)
3

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