perf(tui): instrument stdout drain — rule out terminal parse bottleneck

Adds four fields to FrameEvent.phases and the matching profile
summary:

  optimizedPatches  post-optimize patch count (what's actually
                    written to stdout; the .patches field is
                    pre-optimize)
  writeBytes        UTF-8 byte count of the write this frame
  backpressure      true when Node's stdout.write returned false
                    (Writable buffer full — outer terminal can't
                    keep up)
  prevFrameDrainMs  end-to-end drain time of the PREVIOUS frame's
                    write, captured from stdout.write's 2-arg
                    callback.  Reported on the next frame so the
                    measurement reflects "time until OS flushed
                    the bytes to the terminal fd", not "time until
                    queued in Node".

writeDiffToTerminal() now returns { bytes, backpressure } and
accepts an optional onDrain callback.  Only attached on TTY with
diff; piped/non-TTY stdout bypasses flow control so the callback
would fire synchronously anyway.

Initial measurements under hold-wheel_up against 1106-msg session
(30Hz for 6s):

  patches total    28,888
  optimized total  16,700   (ratio 0.58 — optimizer cuts ~42%)
  writeBytes       42 KB / 10s = 4.2 KB/s throughput
  drainMs p50      0.14 ms   terminal accepts bytes instantly
  drainMs p99      0.85 ms
  backpressure     0% of frames

This rules out the terminal-parse hypothesis — Cursor's xterm.js
drains our output in sub-millisecond time at only 4 KB/s.  The
remaining lag has to be in the render pipeline, not the wire.
Profile output now includes the bytes+drain+backpressure lines to
keep this visible on every subsequent iteration.
This commit is contained in:
Brooklyn Nicholson 2026-04-26 17:06:22 -05:00
parent d3dedf10aa
commit f823535db2
6 changed files with 126 additions and 4 deletions

View file

@ -203,10 +203,15 @@ export type Terminal = {
stderr: Writable
}
export function writeDiffToTerminal(terminal: Terminal, diff: Diff, skipSyncMarkers = false): void {
export function writeDiffToTerminal(
terminal: Terminal,
diff: Diff,
skipSyncMarkers = false,
onDrain?: () => void
): { bytes: number; backpressure: boolean } {
// No output if there are no patches
if (diff.length === 0) {
return
return { bytes: 0, backpressure: false }
}
// BSU/ESU wrapping is opt-out to keep main-screen behavior unchanged.
@ -278,5 +283,15 @@ export function writeDiffToTerminal(terminal: Terminal, diff: Diff, skipSyncMark
buffer += ESU
}
terminal.stdout.write(buffer)
// Node's Writable.write returns false when the internal buffer is full
// (backpressure). On a slow terminal parser that's the tell: we're
// producing bytes faster than the outer terminal can consume them.
// The 2-arg form attaches a drain callback that fires once the chunk
// is actually flushed to the OS socket/pipe — giving us end-to-end
// drain timing, not just "queued in Node".
const wrote = onDrain
? terminal.stdout.write(buffer, () => onDrain())
: terminal.stdout.write(buffer)
return { bytes: Buffer.byteLength(buffer, 'utf8'), backpressure: !wrote }
}