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Improved theme translation performance by caching compiled messages - #30704

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@acburdine acburdine commented Sep 11, 2026 •

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Repeated frontend translations construct and parse the same ICU message on every request. A CPU profile under a 5,000-request frontend load attributed about 3 seconds (2% of busy time) to intl-messageformat and its parser.

Memoize compiled MessageFormat instances on the legacy I18n instance, keyed by locale and resolved translation content. The memo is cleared during init() and bounded to 5,000 entries in LRU order, because fulltext keys can contain arbitrary content. A malformed message is never memoized, since compiling it throws. A valid message stays memoized when formatting fails for missing bindings; the fallback is still returned for that call. The themeI18next path is unchanged.

New shared helper. The memo goes through ghost/core/core/shared/memoize.ts (about 60 lines) rather than a hand-rolled Map. memoize(compute, key, {max}) is a keyed memo backed by lru-cache (added to ghost/core and the catalog at 11.5.2, a version already in the lockfile). The returned function carries reset(), and max is required.

It is for pure derivations of immutable inputs, not a cache: there is no TTL and no invalidation beyond reset(), so nothing derived from mutable state belongs in it. It has no global state and no config option. This replaces the @tryghost/memoize package proposed in #30886, which had no consumer outside core. #30753 uses it for the date helper's locale candidates.

This is the first PR in a frontend performance stack. It targets main and provides the baseline for testing this fix independently and measuring additional small fixes cumulatively. Subsequent stack PRs should branch from and target codex/frontend-perf-01-i18n-cache. No post-change load profile has been collected yet.

Validation:

  • test/unit/shared/memoize.test.ts: 8 tests for the helper.
  • test/unit/frontend/services/theme-engine/i18n: 25 tests pass, including six cache tests covering reuse with fresh bindings, changed translation content, locale separation, init clearing, error fallback, and the LRU bound. They assert on how often a message is parsed, not on the memo's internals.
  • ESLint, dependency-cruiser and pre-commit checks pass on the changed files; pnpm install --frozen-lockfile is clean.

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ghost/core/test/unit/frontend/services/theme-engine/i18n/cache.test.ts (1)

1-81: LGTM!


Walkthrough

The change adds a shared bounded LRU memoization helper and uses it to cache compiled I18n message formatters by locale and message. The I18n service resets the cache during initialization and handles errors from formatter construction and message formatting. New unit tests cover memoization behavior, cache limits, reset behavior, and formatter fallback cases.

Suggested reviewers: evanhahn

Priority: ➖ Normal

Change: Refactor

Merge Risk: ⚪ Minimal · up to d92e7

The change caches compiled theme translation messages to cut CPU use on frontend requests. No merge-blocking risk was identified in the supplied context. Normal CI and test checks still apply.

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 6
✅ Passed checks (6 passed)
Check name Status Explanation
Description check ✅ Passed The description clearly explains the compiled-message cache, shared memoize helper, LRU bound, fallback behavior, tests, and validation results. It directly matches the changeset.
Title check ✅ Passed The title clearly and concisely summarizes the main change: caching compiled theme translation messages to improve frontend performance.
Linked Issues check ✅ Passed Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check ✅ Passed Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Type-Safe Boundaries ✅ Passed No explicit type-safe-boundary failure is introduced. The PR adds an internal memoize helper and uses it with values already returned by the existing i18n path. The filesystem read and JSON.parse …
New Files Are Typescript ✅ Passed The PR adds no new .js, .jsx, .cjs, or .mjs files. It adds TypeScript files only. The changed i18n.js file is pre-existing and was modified, which this check excludes.
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Codecov Report

❌ Patch coverage is 90.90909% with 2 lines in your changes missing coverage. Please review.
✅ Project coverage is 69.30%. Comparing base (6df192e) to head (d92e75e).
⚠️ Report is 11 commits behind head on main.

Files with missing lines Patch % Lines
...e/core/frontend/services/theme-engine/i18n/i18n.js 85.71% 1 Missing ⚠️
ghost/core/core/shared/memoize.ts 93.33% 0 Missing and 1 partial ⚠️
Additional details and impacted files
@@            Coverage Diff             @@
##             main   #30704      +/-   ##
==========================================
+ Coverage   69.19%   69.30%   +0.10%     
==========================================
  Files        1622     1626       +4     
  Lines       59346    59424      +78     
  Branches    10253    10263      +10     
==========================================
+ Hits        41067    41185     +118     
+ Misses      15990    15952      -38     
+ Partials     2289     2287       -2     
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@acburdine
acburdine added this pull request to stack #30754 September 14, 2026 16:58
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acburdine force-pushed the codex/frontend-perf-01-i18n-cache branch 2 times, most recently from 4ddf901 to a9698ba Compare September 14, 2026 22:38
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acburdine force-pushed the codex/frontend-perf-01-i18n-cache branch from a9698ba to b28c1a5 Compare September 17, 2026 19:21
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acburdine marked this pull request as ready for review September 17, 2026 21:26
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acburdine force-pushed the codex/frontend-perf-01-i18n-cache branch from b28c1a5 to 1885f95 Compare September 17, 2026 21:26

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Benchmarked on the Pro image — the parser was the largest single allocator

This PR notes "no post-change load profile has been collected yet". Here's one.

Measured on the Moya Pro benchmark (ghost-perf, 5,000-request weighted frontend mix, fixed-work CPU time), against an integration branch of this PR plus #30753, #30874, #30722, #30886 and #30887 versus main at the merge base. Two pairs, so each figure below appears twice independently.

baseline run 1 baseline run 2 with the cache
intl-messageformat-parser allocated 1,026.6 MB (3.8%) 1,038.0 MB (3.8%) absent from the top 25 (<73 MB)
intl-messageformat-parser CPU self 1,888 ms (1.3%) 1,795 ms (1.3%) absent from the top 25 (<578 ms)
intl-messageformat CPU self 1,357 ms (1.0%) 1,305 ms (1.0%) absent from the top 25

Both packages drop off the bottom of a full 25-row table in both integration runs.

The headline finding is the allocation, which the original profile didn't capture: intl-messageformat-parser was the single largest allocating package in the whole run, at ~1 GB per 5,000 requests. That has a second-order effect the CPU attribution alone understates — across the combined branch, (native / v8) self time fell 1,981 ms and node internals 1,676 ms, which is GC no longer collecting parse garbage.

So the ~2% of busy time this PR attributed to the ICU path was, if anything, an underestimate of what caching it buys.

The combined branch came in at −11.5% CPU for the same fixed workload (pairs: −13.3%, −9.6%), with the two arms not overlapping — the worst integration run still beat the best baseline by 9.6%. This PR and #30722 (the nconf freeze) are the two dominant contributors; the others are not separable from noise at this resolution.

Caveat on attribution: this was measured with all six PRs combined, not with this one in isolation. The per-package figures above come from the profile lane, which attributes self time and allocation by package, so they're direct measurements rather than a subtraction — but I haven't run this PR alone, and I can't rule out interaction with the others from these runs.

For context on reading any of these numbers: load.cpu_s on this benchmark carries a 4.2% noise floor (pooled within-version sd across 20 scheduled runs), about half of it runner speed drift that runner.calibration_ms in each result.json corrects for. Several smaller metrics I initially read as improvements (boot wall time, boot heap) flipped sign on the repeat and were noise — worth a second pair before trusting anything in the single-digit-percent range here.


Generated by Claude Code

@acburdine acburdine mentioned this pull request Sep 18, 2026
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acburdine force-pushed the codex/frontend-perf-01-i18n-cache branch from 1885f95 to bb070ef Compare September 30, 2026 13:55
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Repo: TryGhost/Ghost PR: 29723
File: ghost/core/test/unit/server/services/automations/automations-repository.test.ts:2117-2117
Timestamp: 2026-08-03T21:09:05.797Z
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ghost/core/core/shared/memoize.ts (1)

1-62: LGTM!

ghost/core/test/unit/shared/memoize.test.ts (1)

1-158: LGTM!

Comment thread ghost/core/test/unit/frontend/services/theme-engine/i18n/cache.test.js Outdated
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Repeated frontend translations were reparsing identical ICU messages. Compiled
formatters are now memoized by locale and resolved translation content, cleared
on theme initialization, and bounded to 5,000 entries in LRU order, because
fulltext keys can contain arbitrary content.

The memo goes through a new core/shared/memoize helper rather than a hand-rolled
Map: a keyed memo backed by lru-cache with a required bound, for pure
derivations of immutable inputs. It is not a cache: there is no TTL and no
invalidation beyond reset(), so nothing derived from mutable state belongs in
it. It lives in core/shared because frontend and shared code both need it, and
it replaces the @tryghost/memoize package proposed separately, which had no
consumer outside core.

A malformed message is never memoized, because compiling it throws. A valid
message stays memoized when formatting fails for missing bindings, since the
compiled formatter itself is still correct for the next call.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
@acburdine
acburdine force-pushed the codex/frontend-perf-01-i18n-cache branch from eacfe7b to d92e75e Compare September 30, 2026 14:57
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acburdine requested a review from EvanHahn September 30, 2026 19:40
@acburdine
acburdine merged commit f873ac9 into main Sep 30, 2026
103 of 105 checks passed
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acburdine deleted the codex/frontend-perf-01-i18n-cache branch September 30, 2026 19:42
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