E.g.,
$ node bin/tex2svg --inline '\definecolor{red}{RGB}{255,0,0}\color{red}e^{i \pi} + 1 = 0'
returns with
TeX parse error: Undefined control sequence \definecolor
But
$ node bin/tex2svg --inline '\require{color}\definecolor{red}{RGB}{255,0,0}\color{red}e^{i \pi} + 1 = 0'
works fine.