PACO.IO

Obsidian Vault Portal v2.0
guest@paco.io:~$cat "docs/performance-baseline-2026-08-12.md"

PACO.IO Performance Baseline — 2026-08-12

Status: Phase P4.1 baseline

This is a bounded steady-state performance record. It does not reopen EI modernization.

Baseline head

Measured from 4e99f9307aa663ec58a633e3b57926324844d9e4 after Phase 3 completed.

Primary runtime surfaces

Repository source sizes at the baseline head:

  • _layouts/default.html: ~20.6 KB source
  • assets/css/style.scss: ~17.7 KB source
  • assets/js/terminal-search.js: ~8.9 KB
  • assets/js/technical-reader.js: ~7.2 KB
  • assets/js/related-material.js: ~4.9 KB
  • search-index.json: ~2.4 KB source template before Jekyll expansion

The JavaScript features are dependency-free and progressively optional: terminal search, technical reader controls, and related-material discovery all operate without a framework.

Confirmed findings

Fonts

The shared layout already loads IBM Plex Mono and VT323 from Google Fonts using <preconnect> and a stylesheet link with display=swap. The compiled stylesheet also imported the same Google Fonts stylesheet, creating redundant font-CSS discovery/parsing. P4.1 removes the Sass @import and keeps the document-head load as the single external font request path.

The self-hosted green_screenregular and pixelmixregular declarations already use font-display: swap and prefer WOFF before TTF.

Search remains metadata-first. The source search-index template is small and does not intentionally serialize entire article bodies. Payload growth should be measured as the publication expands before introducing tiered/lazy indexing.

JavaScript

No large application framework is present in the new reader/discovery stack. The current feature scripts total roughly 21 KB unminified source before transfer compression. This is acceptable for the current scope; future dependencies should justify their cost.

Images

Article CSS constrains images and video responsively and prevents normal content from widening the document. PTIR images remain editorial content and must not be removed merely to reduce payload.

Repository hygiene vs runtime payload

The repository contains tracked _site build output and some legacy/static assets. These increase repository size but are not evidence that every asset is transferred on a normal article request. Do not delete historical/static assets solely from source-tree size measurements; runtime use and preservation value must be established first.

P4.1 change

Commit 285f775c143f62263ac3091cd3e79fc0724deef8 removes the duplicate Google Fonts import from assets/css/style.scss. The head stylesheet link remains authoritative.

Performance policy

  • Prefer measured regressions over arbitrary sub-second promises.
  • Track LCP, INP, and CLS when browser-based measurement is available.
  • Keep search metadata-first until measured index growth justifies additional architecture.
  • Prefer small dependency-free enhancements over framework introduction.
  • Preserve images that carry editorial value.
  • Treat optional reader/discovery JavaScript as progressive enhancement.