---
title: Performance
description: Resource efficiency, lazy loading, and minimal footprint
tags: [performance, efficiency, optimization]
dependencies: [zero-infra]
---

# Performance

Every unnecessary byte, every wasted cycle, every avoidable delay erodes trust.

## Principles

- **Measure first**: Profile before optimizing. Real user metrics, not just benchmarks.
- **Budget everything**: Page weight < 100KB initial. Time to interactive < 2s on 3G. API p95 < 200ms.
- **Ship less**: The fastest code is code that doesn't execute.

## Frontend

Inline critical CSS, defer the rest. Defer non-critical JS. Lazy-load below the fold. Use efficient formats (WebP, WOFF2, brotli). Cache hashed assets immutably, HTML with no-cache.

## Backend

Index queries. Avoid N+1. Use connection pooling. Paginate — never return unbounded lists. Cache at every layer. Set concurrency limits. An execution environment is required for the Bash tool and anything but lightweight tasks that fit inside the browser-based Edge-container.

## Agent-specific

- **Token efficiency**: Send only relevant context, not full histories. Summarize before including. Fewer requests and less data transferred also reduces the data exposure surface — performance and privacy share a structural root.
- **Stream responses**: Users perceive streaming as faster even when total time is the same.
- **Connection management**: Reuse connections. Pool clients. Set timeouts.

## For agents

1. Set a performance budget before writing code
2. Optimize the critical path — the work that blocks the user
3. Edge-container with in-browser Linux virtualization can only handle lightweight tasks. Anything else requires a proper execution environment, on localhost or remote.
4. Prefer fewer, larger requests over many small ones
5. Cache aggressively, invalidate precisely