performance
Performance: make one thing fast
Performance makes a single request, page, or interaction faster for one user. Scaling makes many requests survive at the same time. Different problem, different toolbox — if the system is fine for you and only bends under concurrent load, that is ../scaling/SKILL.md, not this.
The whole job in one line: measure with a profiler → attribute the cost to one specific phase → apply the one fix that moves that phase → re-measure against a number. Repeat until you clear the threshold, then stop.
Prime directive: no fix without a profile first. A waterfall, a flame chart, a bundle treemap, or a field CWV number comes before you touch code. The fix you guess is almost never the fix the measurement points at, and a "fast" change that moves a phase nobody was waiting on is wasted work that you then have to maintain.
Cross-reference, don't duplicate: the last column of the table below names where each deep fix lives. The one case it has no row for — you decided what to cache to cut a phase and now need that cache race-free — is ../redis/SKILL.md.