> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://ploegert.gitbook.io/til/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://ploegert.gitbook.io/til/tools/workflow/prune-the-excess-from-node-modules.md).

# Prune The Excess From node\_modules

The `node_modules` directory, which is part of every JavaScript project, is infamously heavy. It is a massive directory of all your project's dependencies and those dependencies' dependencies.

The size of `node_modules` can become a problem on CI build servers with limited disk space. You can significantly reduce the size of `node_modules` by pruning away all the excess files that aren't needed during builds like markdown files, typescript source files, etc.

Include the [`node-prune`](https://github.com/tj/node-prune) binary as part of your build pipeline to handle this.

```bash
$ node-prune /path/to/node_modules
```

In one instance, I saw a reduction from 400MB to 11MB in the `node_modules` directory size.