docs: 2026-08-24 performance and efficiency deep dive

[sambitcreate]

Five parallel source audits of Aiden’s performance and efficiency, then a line-checked current-state document.

What this is

A read-only deep dive saved as docs/performance-efficiency-audit.md. It does not implement the master plan. It records what is true on 94e612a so the July 2026 plan is not used as if nothing has changed.

The existing plan is still the delivery vehicle. This PR only:

• Adds the audit
• Points docs/plans/performance-stability-efficiency-plan.md at it
• Updates the plan index row

Verdict

The expensive parts are still compounding always-on or unbounded paths, not Electron vs React. Highest remaining leverage:

1. Stop embedding historical attachment bytes in chat JSON/IPC, and stop pretty-rewriting the whole transcript on every append
2. Stop idle Git subprocesses (~6 commands every 5s in a folder chat) and the perpetual streaming-reveal RAF loop
3. Move Parakeet off the main thread and cap voice IPC
4. Make parent coding-tool Stop real; own MCP close, crash recovery, and model install
5. Then renderer scale, startup split, map-free packages, and a real measurement loop

What already landed (do not re-open as P0)

• Atomic chat/index writes
• Attachment ingest count/byte caps and sequential reads
• Main-owned generation history (no renderer-supplied base64 history for generate)
• MCP connect single-flight

What the July plan missed

Telegram multi-profile long-poll, Aiden Remote SSE + iOS full-chat reloads, and subagent utilityProcess cost are now first-class efficiency surfaces. iOS itself is largely cache-first and bounded.

Packaged JS size, source-map megabytes, and energy numbers were not remeasured in this environment. Config still ships maps and an eager renderer graph.

Testing

Docs only. No runtime behavior change.

  

[sambitcreate]

Closing because this draft targets the superseded feature/bots-and-ios base after the consolidated mobile/Bots work moved to #41. The source branch is intentionally preserved because its research documents are not included in #41.