Benchmark — Performance Baseline & Regression Detection

When to Use

• Before and after a PR to measure performance impact
• Setting up performance baselines for a project
• When users report "it feels slow"
• Before a launch — ensure you meet performance targets
• Comparing your stack against alternatives

How It Works

Mode 1: Page Performance

Measures real browser metrics via browser MCP:

1. Navigate to each target URL
2. Measure Core Web Vitals:
   - LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) — target < 2.5s
   - CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) — target < 0.1
   - INP (Interaction to Next Paint) — target < 200ms
   - FCP (First Contentful Paint) — target < 1.8s
   - TTFB (Time to First Byte) — target < 800ms
3. Measure resource sizes:
   - Total page weight (target < 1MB)
   - JS bundle size (target < 200KB gzipped)
   - CSS size
   - Image weight
   - Third-party script weight
4. Count network requests
5. Check for render-blocking resources

Mode 2: API Performance

Benchmarks API endpoints:

1. Hit each endpoint 100 times
2. Measure: p50, p95, p99 latency
3. Track: response size, status codes
4. Test under load: 10 concurrent requests
5. Compare against SLA targets

Mode 3: Build Performance

Measures development feedback loop:

1. Cold build time
2. Hot reload time (HMR)
3. Test suite duration
4. TypeScript check time
5. Lint time
6. Docker build time

Mode 4: Before/After Comparison

Run before and after a change to measure impact:

/benchmark baseline    # saves current metrics
# ... make changes ...
/benchmark compare     # compares against baseline

Output:

| Metric | Before | After | Delta | Verdict |
|--------|--------|-------|-------|---------|
| LCP | 1.2s | 1.4s | +200ms | ⚠ WARN |
| Bundle | 180KB | 175KB | -5KB | ✓ BETTER |
| Build | 12s | 14s | +2s | ⚠ WARN |

Output

Stores baselines in .ecc/benchmarks/ as JSON. Git-tracked so the team shares baselines.

Integration

• CI: run /benchmark compare on every PR
• Pair with /canary-watch for post-deploy monitoring
• Pair with /browser-qa for full pre-ship checklist