Beasties

Beasties is a Webpack/Vite plugin that inlines critical CSS and lazy-loads the rest for improved initial paint time. Version 0.4.2 (as of 2025) is a maintained fork of GoogleChromeLabs/critters, actively developed by the Nuxt/Vue ecosystem. Unlike alternatives using headless browsers, Beasties is lightweight and fast by parsing HTML/CSS directly. It supports preloading fonts, pruning unused CSS, and integrates via beasties-webpack-plugin or vite-plugin-beasties. Requires Node >=18.0.0 and ships TypeScript types.