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patterm/TODO.md
Harry Bayliss 1c590f8e32 Concrete perf metrics: live counters in --profile + benchmark suite
Live metrics (--profile):
- New metricsTracker instruments OnPTYOut, viewport renderer,
  stdout writes, libghostty-vt Write/Title CGO calls, sidebar /
  tabbar / status draws (with cache-hit accounting), snapshot
  replays, and the chrome ticker (so we can see ticker fires that
  did nothing).
- Writes metrics.jsonl (one snapshot per second) and metrics.json
  + summary.txt on exit, alongside the existing pprof files.
- All record* methods are nil-safe so disabled paths pay only a
  cheap nil check; counters are atomic so the per-PTY-chunk hot
  path stays lock-free.

Benchmark suite (go test -bench=.):
- Three workload fixtures — plain ASCII, SGR-styled lines, and a
  ratatui-style cursor-shuffling burst — plus a containsOSC
  microbenchmark. Reports ns/op, MB/s, allocs/op, B/op.
- Initial baseline numbers added to TODO under the perf-audit
  section, alongside two new findings (renderer allocs ~1 per 4
  bytes on styled chunks; styled throughput tops out near
  90 MB/s) those benchmarks surfaced.
2026-05-15 13:31:37 +01:00

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# Perf Audit (auto-generated 2026-05-15)
Findings from a codebase sweep — not user-reported, needs review before
action. Each item names the anchor and a sketched fix.
Baseline benchmark numbers (`go test -bench=. ./internal/app/`, AMD
Ryzen 7 7800X3D):
```
ViewportRenderer_PlainASCII 229 MB/s 1.3 KB/op 6 allocs/op
ViewportRenderer_StyledLines 89 MB/s 91 KB/op 4325 allocs/op
ViewportRenderer_RatatuiBurst 40 MB/s 365 KB/op 17306 allocs/op
RendererThroughput_ReuseInstance 90 MB/s 316 KB/op 17380 allocs/op
ContainsOSC_NoOSC 3050 MB/s 0 B/op 0 allocs/op
```
- [ ] **viewport renderer allocates ~1 alloc per 4 input bytes on SGR/CSI-heavy chunks.** [MEDIUM]
- `internal/app/viewport_renderer.go` — the styled-lines and
ratatui benchmarks show 4-17k allocs per chunk. The hot
contributors are likely (a) `string(vr.buf)` / `string(params)`
conversions in `emitCSI` for every escape sequence, (b) the
`pending strings.Builder` resizing as fragments arrive, and (c)
`vr.shifter.Shift(vr.buf)` returning a fresh slice per CSI.
- Fix direction: switch CSI param parsing to byte-slice
comparison (no string conversion); reuse `vr.buf` and
`vr.pending` backing arrays across `Render` calls by
pre-growing in `newViewportRenderer`; have `cursorShifter.Shift`
return into a caller-owned buffer instead of allocating.
Profile-guided: run the styled-lines bench, point pprof at the
allocs profile, fix the top three call sites.
- [ ] **viewport renderer throughput (~90 MB/s styled) limits codex steady-state.** [MEDIUM]
- The styled-lines and ratatui benchmarks come in at 89 MB/s and
40 MB/s respectively. A 100 KB/s codex burst is far under that
limit, but a session-resume dump of a 5 MiB chat history takes
50-130 ms of pure renderer time at those rates — enough to be
user-visible at the start of a long resume.
- Fix direction: same as the alloc fix above; once the per-call
allocation cost drops, the throughput ceiling rises with it.
Worth re-running the benches after fixing the allocs and only
investing further if the styled-lines bench is still under
~300 MB/s.
- [ ] **Session.Children() allocates a fresh slice on every call.** [MEDIUM]
- `internal/app/session.go:530-541` walks `s.order` under `s.mu` and
builds a new `[]*Child` slice every time. Callers on hot paths:
`drawSidebar` calls it twice per frame
(`internal/app/sidebar.go:139` and `:171`); `drawTabBar` calls it
once per frame (`internal/app/tabbar.go:37`); the classifier
iterates it every 250 ms (`internal/app/classifier.go:38`); and
palette/navigation hit it on every Ctrl-A/D/W/S keystroke.
- Fix direction: store the snapshot in an `atomic.Pointer[[]*Child]`
on `Session`, refresh it under `s.mu` only when `Spawn` / `delete`
mutates the map. Readers get O(1) `Load()` with zero allocation —
same pattern already used for `listeners` (session.go:118-123).
- [ ] **wait_for_pattern re-scans the entire stream/grid every iteration.** [MEDIUM]
- `internal/app/host.go:476-493` (the `check` closure). On `scope =
"scrollback"` it calls `c.StreamRead(0)` followed by
`stripANSIBytes(nil, b)` over the entire ring on every wake — a
full O(ring size) walk per chunk arrival. On `grid` it goes
through PlainText (one CGO call) plus a regex match against the
full grid string. For an agent waiting on a marker in a chatty
pane, every PTY chunk fires `check()`.
- Fix direction: for `scrollback`, track the offset of the last
check and run the regex only over the new tail, reusing a
per-call scratch buffer for ANSI stripping. For `grid`, dedupe
on `ScreenVersion()` — skip when version hasn't changed.
- [ ] **search_output compiles regex + strips ANSI on every call.** [MEDIUM]
- `internal/app/host.go:428` compiles a fresh `regexp.Regexp` per
invocation; `:434` strips ANSI over the entire ring buffer when
`kind="rendered"`. Agents that poll `search_output` with the same
pattern (the typical "watch for marker" loop) repay both costs on
every call.
- Fix direction: small LRU of compiled regexes keyed by pattern
string (cap maybe 32) on `toolHost`. Cache the stripped-ANSI
buffer keyed by `c.ScreenVersion()` so consecutive searches over
an unchanged ring reuse the strip.
- [ ] **GetProcessOutput grid mode acquires the emulator twice.** [MEDIUM]
- `internal/app/host.go:375-391` does `em := c.Emulator()` for
ActiveScreen / Cursor / Size, then at line 387 re-fetches
`em := c.Emulator()` for PlainText. Each `Emulator()` call goes
through `ptyMu` and inspects the live PTY pointer. Under a
chatty agent polling `get_process_output` every 100 ms this is
a redundant lock and pointer chase per call.
- Fix direction: hold the emulator reference from the first
lookup; reuse it for PlainText. The check `if em == nil` still
runs cleanly because the variable is captured.
- [ ] **FindChildByIdentity is O(N) under the session lock.** [LOW]
- `internal/app/session.go:553-565` scans the children map looking
for a matching `Identity` token on every new mcp-stdio
connection. Not a steady-state hot path — only fires once per
child spawn — but with many short-lived sub-agents it adds up
and contends with everyone else taking `s.mu`.
- Fix direction: maintain an `identityIndex map[string]string`
(identity → child id) updated alongside spawn / exit, give the
lookup an O(1) read.
- [ ] **Per-promoter regex matches in the idle classifier.** [LOW]
- `internal/app/idle.go:175-182` (`matchAny`) walks each compiled
pattern and runs the DFA over the same 4 KiB tail. A preset with
five permission patterns + five error patterns is ten DFA
invocations per child per 250 ms tick.
- Fix direction: at preset load time, compile each `_patterns`
list into a single alternation regex (`(?:p1)|(?:p2)|…`). The
classifier then makes one Match call per category per tick.
- [ ] **Port-detection dedup is O(N²) over c.ports.** [LOW]
- `internal/app/child.go:461-467`: for each fresh URL match the
code linearly scans the existing port list. The list rarely
grows past a handful, but a dev server that lists "all open
ports" in one log line interacts badly: M new matches × N
existing entries.
- Fix direction: keep a `seenPorts map[int]struct{}` next to
`c.ports`, rebuilt on prune (none today). O(1) per match.
- [ ] **Port-sighting string allocations happen before the dedup check.** [LOW]
- `internal/app/child.go:455-456` allocates `urlForm` and `portStr`
before line 461's `seen` walk. Both strings are wasted when the
port is already in `c.ports`. Inside `c.portsMu` for the whole
loop body too, blocking the `Ports()` reader path.
- Fix direction: bind the port int first (cheap parse from
`m[1]`), do the seen check, only then allocate the URL string
for the surviving sighting.
- [ ] **classifier `time.Now()` syscall per child per tick.** [LOW]
- `internal/app/classifier.go:54` (and the `IdleMS` /
`TitleIdleMS` helpers it transitively calls in
`internal/app/child.go:343-374`) each call `time.Now()`.
Reading time on Linux is fast (vDSO) but with N children × 4
`time.Now()` per tick × 4 ticks/sec it's wasted work that can
be batched.
- Fix direction: capture `now := time.Now().UnixNano()` once at
the top of `classifyAll` and thread it into `classifyOne` and
the helpers as a parameter.
- [ ] **wait_for_pattern subscribes a listener for every call.** [LOW]
- `internal/app/host.go:472-474`: each invocation calls
`Session.Subscribe(wake)` which clones the listener slice and
swaps the atomic pointer; the `defer Unsubscribe` does the same
on exit. Two allocations per `wait_for_pattern`. The agent
pattern of looping on `wait_for_pattern` after every tool call
pays this churn on the steady-state path.
- Fix direction: a per-child `chunkBroadcaster` registered once
at child spawn that hands out lightweight subscriber tokens,
rather than going through the full session listener machinery.
# On Hold
- [ ] There's a unicode <?> being displayed in opencode [ON HOLD]
- Investigated 2026-05-14: patterm passes ghostty grapheme codepoints
through unchanged (vt/ghostty.go:452-462), so the `<?>` glyph is
most likely the *host* terminal's font fallback for opencode's
Nerd Font private-use codepoints, not a patterm substitution.
Need a concrete reproduction (which codepoint, which host
terminal/font) before changing rendering.
- [ ] After codex rips for like 15 minutes, the terminal becomes quite slow. [ON HOLD / VERIFYING]
- 2026-05-14: Perf plan P1-P11 landed (see CHANGELOG). Needs a real
long-running codex session to confirm whether the steady-state
slowdown is gone or some hotspot remains. Capture a pprof if it
still feels slow after ≥15 minutes — the structural drivers the
audit named are all addressed, so a remaining symptom is a new
one and probably wants fresh profiling.