performance
Installation
SKILL.md
Performance Optimization
Performance work follows one rule above all others: measure before you change anything. Intuition about bottlenecks is wrong more often than it is right. Every optimization should start with profiling, produce a hypothesis, apply a targeted fix, and verify with another measurement.
Core Principles
| Principle | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Measure first | Never optimize without profiling data -- gut feelings about bottlenecks are unreliable |
| Optimize the critical path | Focus on the code that runs most frequently or blocks user-visible latency |
| Set budgets | Define acceptable latency, throughput, and resource usage before you start |
| Avoid premature optimization | Readable, correct code first -- optimize only when measurements show a real problem |
| Know your tradeoffs | Every optimization trades something (memory for speed, complexity for throughput, freshness for latency) |
Profiling and Benchmarking
Profiling identifies where time and resources are spent. Without it, you are guessing.