Cloudflare Pages file-count headroom (approaching the ~20k limit)

Cloudflare Pages caps a deployment at ~20,000 files. As of 2026-06-27 we deploy 18,326 files, so headroom is limited and grows with every new content item. Tracking the analysis and levers here for when we need them.

Done so far

• #1421 pruned ~934 intermediate OG-source SVGs (deploy 19,260 → 18,326) and made web image resolution prefer PNG (lib/image-utils.ts).
• Paused the daily auto-content generation to stop the count creeping up (the weekly digest is kept).

Rough breakdown of the ~18.3k

• ~1,670 HTML pages (one per post/tag/quiz/comparison/game/etc., trailingSlash: false)
• ~518 .md copies (AI-readable post/advent routes)
• ~1,231 images (1,082 png + 132 svg)
• ~15k _next/ JS/CSS chunks — the bulk, currently unconfirmed

Confirm the _next bulk

Run on a built out/:

find out -type f | sed 's|/[^/]*$||' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -20

Levers, ranked

1. Threshold tag pages. 669 tags exist; 433 have only a single post. Generate only tags with ≥2 posts (~-433 pages). Filter centrally in lib/tags.ts so the [tag] generateStaticParams and the tag chips use the same filtered set (no broken links).
2. Offload images to Cloudflare R2 (~-1,231). Biggest single win; R2 is on Cloudflare so no egress, edge-cached. Rewrite image URLs + drop public/images.
3. Reconsider the .md copies (~-518) if the AI-readable routes aren't pulling weight.
4. Investigate the _next/ chunk count once the diagnostic above is run (likely per-route chunks from the 45 interactive game/simulator components).

Start by building out/ and running the listed find command to confirm how much of the deployment is in _next/ chunks. Then read lib/tags.ts and the [tag] generateStaticParams and tag-chip usage to assess the threshold-page option. The issue needs an agreed lever and acceptance criteria before completion can be verified.