Per Codex + Jay: the SW was added for nice-to-have PWA/offline caching, but it
sat in the boot path and put first loads at risk (post-deploy tiny-chunk stalls
of 4-10s — fast HTML, then delayed chunks). For a young site where a handful of
visitors a day IS the audience, a broken first impression is a huge share of
traffic. The site's value doesn't need offline caching; browser HTTP cache +
the Cloudflare edge are enough.
Removed cleanly (not just deleted — that strands the old worker on existing
clients):
- Delete src/service-worker.js → SvelteKit stops auto-registering.
- static/service-worker.js is now a one-shot KILL SWITCH: takes over, wipes all
caches, unregisters itself, no fetch handler (requests go straight to network/
browser cache). Served no-cache so existing clients pick it up.
- app.html boot script unregisters any worker + clears caches on load, as a
backstop so no returning visitor stays stuck on the old boot path.
The boot seatbelt (timeout card, preloadError reload-once, telemetry) stays —
that, not the SW, was the real blank-screen protection. Build clean, 11 vitest.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
thejayman77
18c4530721
