This is where Bazel + rules_js ecosystem shines. First of all it lazily fetches dependencies which means if you are only building 1 out of X projects you are only getting your projects dependencies from npm, then it's only providing just those dependencies to the sandbox when you are doing node.js things like Typescript compilation. Finally you can assemble Docker/OCI images using rules_docker and js_image_layer which prevents the need for Dockerfiles at all, creates images with just exactly the dependencies needed (instead of the huge node_modules base layer which would need re-generating and downloading anytime a single dep changed) and better yet can be built pretty much instantly in most cases because it doesn't run Docker to do it.