Optimizing My Hugo Blog: From 3.6 MB of JavaScript to Zero

My Hugo blog was downloading 3.6 MB of JavaScript and 40 KB of external CSS on every page load. For a static blog with mostly text and a few diagrams, that was absurd. Here is how I fixed it. Baseline HTML: 86 KB JavaScript: 3.6 MB (Mermaid + KaTeX) CSS: 40 KB (KaTeX stylesheets) Problem: render-blocking scripts loaded on every page for math and diagrams Optimization 1: HTML minification Adding minifyOutput = true to hugo.toml shrunk HTML by 16%. Small win, zero risk. Optimization 2: Inline CSS