svelte-fast-check

Up to 24x faster type and Svelte compiler warning checker for Svelte/SvelteKit projects.

Korean

Status

Experimental — depends on TypeScript 7 (tsgo) preview. But actively used by the author in production.

Why svelte-fast-check?

Two things make svelte-check slow for development:

1. No incremental check - Re-checks everything on every run
2. tsc is slow - Single-threaded, no parallelism

We fix both:

Problem	Solution
No incremental	tsgo supports incremental check
tsc is slow	tsgo is 5-10x faster (Go-based, parallel)

Everything else stays the same - we use the same svelte2tsx and svelte/compiler as svelte-check.

What Gets Checked

• TypeScript errors in .ts and .svelte files
• Svelte compiler warnings — unused CSS, a11y hints, state_referenced_locally, etc.

Not included: CSS language service diagnostics — use eslint-plugin-svelte or Biome (v2.3.11+)

Benchmark

Measured on a 282-file Svelte project (M4 Pro):

Command	Time	Comparison
svelte-check	14.4s	baseline
svelte-fast-check	2.6s	5.5x faster
svelte-fast-check --incremental (cold)	6.0s	2.4x faster
svelte-fast-check --incremental (warm)	0.6s	24x faster

Requirements

• macOS or Linux (Windows is not supported)
• Node.js 22+ or Bun
• Svelte 5+
• TypeScript 5+

Installation

npm install -D svelte-fast-check
# or
bun add -D svelte-fast-check

Usage

# Basic
npx svelte-fast-check

# Incremental mode (recommended)
npx svelte-fast-check --incremental

# Even faster with bun
bun svelte-fast-check --incremental

CLI Options

Option	Short	Description
--incremental	-i	Convert only changed files, use tsgo incremental build
--project <path>	-p	Specify tsconfig.json path (for monorepos)
--no-svelte-warnings		Skip Svelte compiler warnings (type check only)
--raw	-r	Show raw output without filtering/mapping
--config <path>	-c	Specify config file path

Configuration

Works out of the box for most projects. Automatically reads paths and exclude from tsconfig.json.

For custom configuration, create svelte-fast-check.config.ts:

import type { FastCheckConfig } from 'svelte-fast-check';

export default {
  srcDir: './src',
  exclude: ['../src/**/*.test.ts'],
} satisfies FastCheckConfig;

How It Works

                    ┌─→ svelte2tsx → tsgo → filter → map ─────→┐
.svelte files ──────┤                                          ├──→ merged diagnostics
                    └─→ svelte.compile (warnings) → filter ───→┘

Two pipelines run in parallel:

1. Type checking: svelte2tsx converts .svelte to .tsx, then tsgo type-checks
2. Compiler warnings: svelte.compile({ generate: false }) collects Svelte-specific warnings

Both results are merged and displayed together.

Design

Where the Time Goes

On a 282-file Svelte project:

Cold (~2.6s):

svelte2tsx (~640ms)
    ↓
┌───┴───┐
tsgo    svelte/compiler   ← runs in parallel
(~2000ms)  (~700ms)
└───┬───┘
    ↓
~2600ms

Incremental warm (~0.6s):

svelte2tsx (skip unchanged)
    ↓
┌───┴───┐
tsgo    svelte/compiler   ← both use cache
(~500ms)   (skip unchanged)
└───┬───┘
    ↓
~600ms

The speedup comes from:

1. tsgo - 5-10x faster than tsc (Go-based, parallel, incremental)
2. Parallel execution - Type checking and svelte/compiler run simultaneously
3. Incremental caching - svelte2tsx and svelte/compiler skip unchanged files

Why keep svelte2tsx and svelte/compiler?

Rewriting the parser would only save ~640ms. Considering maintenance burden and stability, using the official tooling is better:

• Same svelte2tsx as svelte-check - guaranteed compatibility
• New Svelte syntax (like Runes) works immediately by updating peer dependencies
• Zero maintenance burden for parser updates

What We Don't Do

svelte-check already handles these well. No need to reinvent:

• Language Server - IDE features (autocompletion, hover, go to definition)
• Watch mode - file change detection and auto-rerun

For these features, use svelte-check or svelte-language-server.

Limitations

• tsgo is still in preview.
• False positives - Known cases are handled. If you find more, please open an issue.

Using with svelte-check

We recommend using svelte-fast-check for fast feedback during development, and svelte-check for accurate validation in CI:

{
  "scripts": {
    "check": "svelte-fast-check --incremental",
    "check:ci": "svelte-check"
  }
}

Motivation

As my project grew, svelte-check became slow. I wanted to try incremental builds and typescript-go.

svelte-check has a lot to consider - Language Server compatibility, cross-platform support, and more - so adopting experimental features like tsgo isn't easy. Official support will take time, so I built this to use in the meantime.

See also:

• Incremental build support request (2023~)
• typescript-go support request (Blocked)

Credits

Built with svelte2tsx from svelte-language-tools and Svelte compiler. Inspired by svelte-check.

License

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2025 Song Jaehak (astralhpi)

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