v4.1.0

⚡️ AI-Powered Performance Breakthrough

This release features major performance optimizations delivered autonomously by GPT-5-Codex. We treated the normalization routine like any critical path service and let AI tighten the slowest sections.

• 9-10x faster Unicode handling - Unicode-aware chunking is now significantly faster:

  • 33kb splits improved from ~101 ops/s to ~964 ops/s
  • Single-pass unicode chunking eliminates extra string length scan
  • Better handling of multicodepoint graphemes

• ~17% faster ASCII processing - Standard ASCII chunking performance improved:

  • 33kb/1mb splits increased from 85.6M to 100.5M ops/s
  • Consolidated ASCII loop with early exits
  • Optimized handling of empty inputs and oversized chunks

🔧 Technical Changes

• Removed dependency on string-length package
• Improved fractional chunk size handling to match legacy slice behavior
• Added regression tests for fractional size chunking
• Code optimizations for reduced per-call overhead

💻 Development Changes

• Updated all dev dependencies to latest versions
• Removed CircleCI config
• Removed Wallaby config
• Node.js engine requirement remains at >=20

📝 Documentation

• Updated benchmarks with latest performance numbers
• Added section about recent optimizations
• Updated usage example to use ES modules syntax

This release focuses on significant performance improvements while maintaining full compatibility with existing behavior.