skills/skills/kvb-code-tune/SKILL.md

name, description

name	description
kvb-code-tune	Speed up CI, deploys, builds and hot paths without losing logic or coverage. Trigger on a job hitting its time budget or when asked where time goes.

One rule outranks every optimization: nothing that reduces logic, coverage or correctness counts as a speed-up.

Session limits

First run in a session: before measuring, invoke the kvb-think-listen skill with the questions of listen.md next to this file. Keep the answers for the session, never ask again, work only inside them; a candidate outside them becomes a proposal. Invoked by another skill (kvb-ci-triage, kvb-ci-observe) or an autonomous run: no questions; examine the handed-over log with the defaults (10 s floor per run, the kvb-org-split skill's 90/5 bar as merge bar, 60 minutes per delegated agent), ask only when an operator-only fact blocks.

Forbidden, whatever it saves

• Dropping a test, a spec, a play, a drill or a verification pass.
• Raising a timeout or budget so a slow thing fits instead of getting faster.
• Swallowed failures, retry-until-pass, a soft skip, a narrowed assertion.
• Trading error semantics, credential masking, concurrency safety or a lint's intent for speed. A per-item failure stays loud and names its item.

Testing less to shrink the clock is reported as a coverage cut for the operator to decide, never applied as a tuning.

Measure first

• Never tune the unmeasured; read numbers from logs, not by eye (logs.md next to this file for profilers, build logs and gate tables).
• Stream every run to a log file and compare runs by their logs; never re-run for a lost number.
• Rank by fixed cost x count: one console boot, package-manager call or container exec times how often the run pays it: a 1 s boot paid 28 times beats a 60 s download paid once.
• The baseline is the newest log of the current code; an older one may carry a step since replaced, and a saving against it is fiction.

Coordinate every cost cluster

Before investigating a cluster (one step, hot path or repeated call), run the kvb-org-organize Peer protocol with every session on this machine, not only the lineage. The first to claim cluster/<slug>, --work naming its log line and number, works it (between machines, the earliest announcement); a claim without a measurement does not count. Its kvb-org-rasci key result is <step> from <before> to under <after>, met only by the re-measurement. Someone earlier: post them your measurements and findings (${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/../kvb-org-radio/scripts/radio.py post --to <holder> "<text>"), take the next cluster, never build a second optimization. A claim ends with its release or the operator's reassignment.

Always check

On each measured hot path, whatever the operator picked, listed in the output even when clean:

• Language and framework: the most efficient fit? Time in computation or inside the framework: read language.md next to this file.
• Unnecessary recursion: a hot path recursing or a tool calling itself: read recursion.md next to this file.

The loop

1. Measure; name the single biggest cost with its log line and number.
2. Coordinate it; work it only when you identified it first.
3. Read candidate.md next to this file; form one candidate, harden it with the kvb-think-dialectic skill, delegate, merge or propose, re-measure.
4. Repeat until the next candidate is worth less than the run measuring it.

Output

One table, biggest saving first:

| Candidate | Before | After | Source | Verdict |

Rejected candidates stay with the reason they fell; proposals carry what would close their gap.