Postgres Indexing and Query Optimization

When to use

Invoke when a PostgreSQL workload has a stated or suspected performance problem, when validating that an existing schema meets performance budgets before a scale event, when auditing indexes for redundancy or bloat, or when remediating slow queries, N+1 access, or bad join orders.

Do not use for: greenfield schema modeling or new-table design (use postgres-schema-and-migration), migration authoring, replication or HA topology (use postgres-replication-and-ha-readiness), backup/restore (use postgres-backup-and-operational-readiness), or access-control hardening (use postgres-security-and-data-access-hardening).

Inputs

Required:

• Connection to the target database or a representative copy with production-like data distribution and volume.
• The performance budget in scope: per-query latency targets, throughput expectations, or the specific slow path. Sourced from performance-architecture.md where it exists.
• The access patterns the database serves, from data-architecture.md or backend-architecture.md.

Optional: