yoctocolors-cjs

In production logging pipelines, yoctocolors-cjs delivers exactly what it promises: ANSI color codes with near-zero runtime overhead. The API is dead simple - just import the colors you need and wrap strings. No configuration objects, no initialization, no connection pooling concerns because there's nothing to pool. Memory footprint is negligible, which matters when you're running thousands of microservice instances.

The package handles the basics well: standard 16 colors, bright variants, and background colors. It respects NO_COLOR and FORCE_COLOR environment variables out of the box, which is crucial for CI/CD environments. Error handling is non-existent because there's nothing to fail - it's pure string wrapping. Performance is excellent; I've never seen it show up in profiling traces even in hot logging paths.

The main limitation is feature scope. No color chaining methods, no template literals support, no RGB/hex colors. If you need structured logging with metadata, you'll pair this with winston or pino anyway. For straightforward CLI output and development logging, it's a lightweight, reliable choice that won't surprise you with breaking changes or performance regressions.

From a security perspective, yoctocolors-cjs is remarkably simple: it's essentially ANSI escape code constants wrapped in functions. There's no input validation because there's no real input to validate—you're just calling functions that return string literals. This simplicity is its greatest security feature: zero dependencies means zero supply chain risk, and the entire codebase is trivial to audit.

The library has no network operations, no file system access, no crypto, no authentication—it just exports color functions. Error handling is non-existent because there's nothing that can fail; invalid usage (like passing non-string arguments) just concatenates whatever you give it. This won't expose sensitive data, but it might produce unexpected output if you're not careful with types.

For terminal UI work, it does exactly what it promises with a tiny footprint. The CommonJS version exists specifically for compatibility, and it delivers that without complexity. There are no configuration options, no side effects on import, and no global state mutations. It follows secure-by-default simply by doing almost nothing.

In production environments where bundle size and startup time matter, yoctocolors-cjs delivers on its promise. It's essentially ANSI escape codes wrapped in a clean API - no feature bloat, no dependencies, just straightforward terminal coloring. The CommonJS version is helpful for legacy tooling and Node.js projects that haven't fully migrated to ESM.

From a runtime perspective, it's essentially zero-cost abstraction. No initialization overhead, no connection pooling concerns (it's just string manipulation), and memory footprint is negligible. The API is dead simple: import the colors you need, wrap your strings, done. No configuration files, no setup ceremony. Performance testing shows it adds microseconds at most to log formatting.

The main operational consideration is that it's purely a formatting library - no logging hooks, no observability integrations, no retry logic (nor should it have any). It does one thing: adds color codes to strings. This simplicity is both its strength and limitation. Error handling is non-existent because there's nothing to fail - it just returns strings with escape codes.