Frontend Performance

Frontend Performance

Acknowledgement: Shared by Peter Bamuhigire, techguypeter.com, +256 784 464178.

Specialist frontend skill. Produces the three deliverables that give a team an operable performance posture: a budget per critical flow, a measurement plan tied to the SLO set, and a regression gate in CI. Not a generic optimisation checklist.

Prerequisites: Load system-architecture-design (for the critical-flow table) and observability-monitoring (for the SLO set and RUM dashboard conventions) before this skill. Load react-development or nextjs-app-router if the stack is React/Next.

Use When

• Defining the performance budget for a new product or critical flow.
• Diagnosing a field regression on LCP, INP, or CLS captured by RUM.
• Wiring up a regression gate before a team scales frontend merges.
• Auditing an existing frontend and translating findings into budgets and gates.
• Choosing between inline CSS vs deferred, server vs client rendering, or route vs component code-split.

Do Not Use When

• The bottleneck is server latency or database query time — use observability-monitoring, the relevant database skill, or reliability-engineering.
• The work is API contract design — use api-design-first.
• The work is pure visual/interaction design without a measurable performance cost — use the UI/UX baseline skills.

Required Inputs

• Critical-flow table from system-architecture-design.
• SLO set and RUM dashboard conventions from observability-monitoring.
• Device and network mix for the target user base.

Workflow

• Read this SKILL.md, then load references/budgets-and-regression-gate.md plus whichever of loading-performance.md, rendering-and-inp.md, framework-recipes.md the task requires.
• Load references/performance-engineering-procedure.md when diagnosing field regressions by metric sub-part, adding Speculation Rules/bfcache/fetchpriority, governing third-party or AI chat scripts, budgeting streaming AI interfaces, or checking toolchain currentness.
• When the change under review was AI-generated, also apply ../../sdlc-meta/ai-assisted-development/references/ai-generated-code-review-gate.md.
• Produce the three deliverables (budget, measurement plan, regression gate) before chasing individual optimisations.
• Tie every SLI back to an SLO owned by observability-monitoring.

Quality Standards

• Budget rows and SLIs map one-to-one with critical flows and SLOs; no orphan metrics.
• Gate is blocking in CI, not advisory.
• Field measurement (RUM) is primary; lab measurement is a leading indicator.

Anti-Patterns

• Chasing Lighthouse score without a field measurement plan.
• Declaring a budget without naming the device class and network.
• Adding a regression gate that only warns and never blocks.

Outputs

• Performance budget per critical flow.
• Measurement plan (SLIs, source, reporting surface, alert thresholds).
• Regression gate in CI.

Evidence Produced

Capability contract

Read and search the application and measurement configuration first. Editing and execution require authorisation; when available, run the existing build, bundle analysis, lab checks, and relevant tests. Network access is optional for current browser guidance.

• references/budgets-and-regression-gate.md
• references/loading-performance.md
• references/rendering-and-inp.md
• references/framework-recipes.md
• references/performance-engineering-procedure.md

When this skill applies

• Establishing a performance budget for a new product or each critical flow in an existing product.
• Investigating a field regression in LCP, INP, or CLS flagged by RUM.
• Designing a CI regression gate before the team scales frontend merges.
• Auditing an existing frontend and producing budgets plus gates, not just a "make it faster" ticket list.
• Choosing between competing rendering strategies (SSR vs SSG vs CSR, inline vs deferred CSS, route vs component split).

Inputs

Outputs

Non-negotiables

• A budget is stated per critical flow with an explicit device class and network.
• Every SLI maps to an SLO owned by observability-monitoring; no stand-alone frontend dashboards.
• Regression gate blocks merges when thresholds are breached; it is not advisory.
• Field measurements (web-vitals beaconed to RUM) drive alerting. Lab metrics (Lighthouse CI) are a PR leading indicator only.
• Core Web Vitals targets: LCP p75 < 2.5s, INP p75 < 200ms, CLS p75 < 0.1 — unless a flow-specific budget supersedes them with written justification.

Decision rules

Rendering strategy

textCopy code
Mostly static marketing / docs / blog      -> SSG (or ISR with long revalidate)
Authenticated dashboard, per-user data     -> SSR streaming + client islands
Highly interactive tool (editor, canvas)   -> CSR with aggressive code-split
Tenant-scoped SaaS app, mixed criticality  -> Server components + selective client

Wrong choice failure mode:
- SSG for per-user data        -> stale personalisation, auth leaks across caches
- SSR for heavy interactivity  -> slow TTFB, wasted server render on cold data
- CSR for content-first pages  -> poor LCP, poor SEO

Inline CSS vs deferred

textCopy code
Above-fold critical path, < 14KB critical CSS         -> inline in <head>
Route-specific, bulky, cachable                       -> external file, async preload
Third-party widget CSS (chat, analytics UI)           -> defer, load after interaction
Design tokens / reset / typography base               -> inline (tiny, load-blocking is fine)

Wrong choice failure mode:
- Inline everything            -> bloated HTML, no CSS caching across navigations
- Defer critical styles        -> FOUC and layout shift on first paint

Code splitting strategy

textCopy code
Route-based split                           -> default for every SPA/Next route
Component-level dynamic import              -> heavy widget (editor, chart, map) > 30KB
Vendor split (react/react-dom)              -> long-cache chunk, rarely updated
No split                                    -> only for single-page tools under 150KB total

Wrong choice failure mode:
- Over-splitting tiny chunks    -> HTTP request overhead + waterfall
- Single monolithic bundle      -> blocks initial interactivity, poor INP

Image handling

textCopy code
Hero / LCP candidate                        -> eager, fetchpriority=high, preload
Above fold, non-LCP                         -> eager, default priority
Below fold                                  -> loading=lazy, decoding=async
Vector/icon under 2KB                       -> inline SVG (no request)
Repeat background                           -> CSS background with responsive image-set()

Wrong choice failure mode:
- Lazy-loading LCP             -> catastrophic LCP regression
- Eager-loading below fold     -> bandwidth waste, contention with LCP

When to add a new SLI

textCopy code
Metric exists and alert correlates with user-visible harm -> keep, publish on dashboard
Metric is a proxy with no known user impact               -> do not alert, log for investigation
Metric is a per-flow variant of a global SLI              -> add as dimension, not new SLI
Metric overlaps a backend SLO                             -> owned by observability-monitoring, not here

Core content

The three deliverables below are the contract. Everything else in references/ supports producing them.

1. Performance budget per critical flow

For each row in the upstream critical-flow table, declare: target device class, target network, LCP, INP, CLS, compressed JS, compressed CSS, total compressed transfer, image-LCP cap. Example table and rules: references/budgets-and-regression-gate.md.

2. Measurement plan

For every SLI: the source (field or lab), the beacon/collector, the dashboard where it is reported, and the alert threshold. Field measurements use web-vitals JS beaconed to the RUM backend defined by observability-monitoring. Lab measurements use Lighthouse CI in the merge pipeline.

3. Regression gate

A blocking CI job with at least: size-limit per entry, Lighthouse CI score and LCP deltas, and a bundle-diff check that flags new dependencies above a threshold. Post-deploy RUM regression triggers a rollback per deployment-release-engineering. Full workflow in references/budgets-and-regression-gate.md.

Working reference material

• Loading-path tactics (images, JS, CSS, fonts, hints, compression): references/loading-performance.md.
• Rendering, CLS, and INP mechanics: references/rendering-and-inp.md.
• Framework recipes (React, Next.js App Router, Vue, vanilla, service workers): references/framework-recipes.md.

Anti-patterns

• Global budget for the whole app. Before: "JS < 200KB". After: per-flow budget with device class, e.g. "Product listing on Moto G Power, 4G: JS < 200KB, LCP p75 < 2.2s". A flat global budget lets heavy flows hide behind light ones.
• Anti-patterns as principles, not mechanics. Before: "Avoid tight coupling between UI and API". After: "Do not await sequential API calls inside a server component that blocks streaming — use Promise.all or move non-critical data to a <Suspense> boundary". Concrete fix, concrete diagnostic.
• Lighthouse score as the sole KPI. Before: "We target Lighthouse 90+ on PRs". After: Lighthouse CI is one lane in the gate; field LCP/INP/CLS p75 drive the alerting contract. Lab-only optimisation masks real-user regressions on low-end devices.
• Lazy-loading the LCP image. Before: <img src="hero.jpg" loading="lazy">. After: <img src="hero.jpg" loading="eager" fetchpriority="high" width=... height=...> plus <link rel="preload" as="image" ...> when the hero is below the HTML discoverability point.
• Animating layout-triggering properties. Before: transition: width 300ms on a sidebar. After: transition: transform 300ms with the sidebar off-canvas and translated in. Avoids forced layout on every frame.
• Regression gate that only warns. Before: CI job posts a comment with size-limit delta. After: job fails the required check when any entry exceeds budget; baseline regeneration is a deliberate PR. Non-blocking gates decay within two sprints.
• Inventing frontend-only dashboards. Before: a bespoke Grafana board owned by the frontend team. After: SLIs published on the RUM dashboard defined by observability-monitoring, with alert routing through the shared on-call pipeline.
• Preloading everything. Before: ten <link rel="preload"> tags. After: preload only the LCP image and one critical font; everything else competes for bandwidth on the critical path.

Read next

• skill-composition-standards — house-style and contract rules this skill conforms to.
• observability-monitoring — owner of SLOs, RUM dashboard, and alert pipeline that the measurement plan plugs into.
• system-architecture-design — source of the critical-flow table that budgets depend on.
• react-development — React-specific patterns referenced by the framework recipes.
• nextjs-app-router — Next.js App Router strategies for server components, streaming, and next/image.

References

• references/budgets-and-regression-gate.md — the three deliverables in template form.
• references/loading-performance.md — image, JS, CSS, font, and resource-hint detail.
• references/rendering-and-inp.md — layout, paint, CLS, and INP mechanics.
• references/framework-recipes.md — React, Next.js App Router, Vue, vanilla, service workers.
• references/performance-engineering-procedure.md — diagnose-fix-gate procedure, navigation acceleration, third-party and streaming-AI budgets, toolchain currentness.