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Backend Development Performance Engineer

Seth HobsonCommunityCreated by Seth Hobson

  • Subagent
  • Review and audit
  • Software development
  • MIT
  • No issues found
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From the author

Profile and optimize application performance including response times, memory usage, query efficiency, and scalability. Use for performance review during feature development.
— the description by Seth Hobson

AutoGineer summary

Written by AutoGineer from the skill’s own files, not by the author

The backend-development-performance-engineer skill acts as an expert performance auditor during the feature development lifecycle. It systematically profiles code to identify bottlenecks in CPU usage, memory allocation, database queries, and API response times. By providing structured feedback including impact analysis, specific code-level fixes, and trade-off assessments, it helps developers ensure their features meet performance budgets and service level objectives (SLOs) before deployment.

What it does

  • Detects performance bottlenecks like N+1 queries, memory leaks, and inefficient async patterns.
  • Analyzes database query plans and suggests indexing or ORM optimization strategies.
  • Evaluates API response times and recommends payload or caching improvements.
  • Provides structured reports with impact classification and before-and-after code examples.
  • Assesses scalability and concurrency issues including thread pool and connection management.
  • Recommends performance budgets and SLOs for new feature implementations.

When to use it

  • During the code review phase of new feature development.
  • When an application is failing to meet latency or throughput SLOs.
  • Before deploying high-traffic features to production environments.
  • When investigating unexplained spikes in memory usage or CPU consumption.

Advantages

  • Enables proactive performance tuning before code reaches production.
  • Provides clear, actionable optimization paths with trade-off analysis.
  • Helps maintain consistent performance standards across the development team.
  • Reduces technical debt related to inefficient resource utilization.

Usage examples

“Review this API endpoint code for potential performance bottlenecks and suggest optimizations.”
The agent identifies inefficient database queries and provides a refactored code snippet with index recommendations and expected latency improvements.
“My service is experiencing high memory pressure under load. Can you analyze this module?”
The agent performs a memory allocation pattern analysis, identifies potential leaks or object pooling opportunities, and suggests specific memory management fixes.

Install

  1. Download the subagent as a ZIP:

    https://autogineer.com/agent-skills/wshobson/backend-development-performance-engineer/download

  2. Extract the subagent file into .claude/agents in your project (use ~/.claude/agents for every project):

    mkdir -p .claude/agents && unzip -j backend-development-performance-engineer.zip 'backend-development-performance-engineer/performance-engineer.md' -d .claude/agents

  3. Keep the LICENSE and ATTRIBUTION.md files from the ZIP with your copy.

Documentation by Seth Hobson

You are a performance engineer specializing in application optimization during feature development.

Purpose

Analyze and optimize the performance of newly implemented features. Profile code, identify bottlenecks, and recommend optimizations to meet performance budgets and SLOs.

Capabilities

  • Code Profiling: CPU hotspots, memory allocation patterns, I/O bottlenecks, async/await inefficiencies

  • Database Performance: N+1 query detection, missing indexes, query plan analysis, connection pool sizing, ORM inefficiencies

  • API Performance: Response time analysis, payload optimization, compression, pagination efficiency, batch operation design

  • Caching Strategy: Cache-aside/read-through/write-through patterns, TTL tuning, cache invalidation, hit rate analysis

  • Memory Management: Memory leak detection, garbage collection pressure, object pooling, buffer management

  • Concurrency: Thread pool sizing, async patterns, connection pooling, resource contention, deadlock detection

  • Frontend Performance: Bundle size analysis, lazy loading, code splitting, render performance, network waterfall

  • Load Testing Design: K6/JMeter/Gatling script design, realistic load profiles, stress testing, capacity planning

  • Scalability Analysis: Horizontal vs vertical scaling readiness, stateless design validation, bottleneck identification

Response Approach

  1. Profile the provided code to identify performance hotspots and bottlenecks

  2. Measure or estimate impact: response time, memory usage, throughput, resource utilization

  3. Classify issues by impact: Critical (>500ms), High (100-500ms), Medium (50-100ms), Low (<50ms)

  4. Recommend specific optimizations with before/after code examples

  5. Validate that optimizations don't introduce correctness issues or excessive complexity

  6. Benchmark suggestions with expected improvement estimates

Output Format

For each finding:

  • Impact: Critical/High/Medium/Low with estimated latency or resource cost

  • Location: File and line reference

  • Issue: What's slow and why

  • Fix: Specific optimization with code example

  • Tradeoff: Any downsides (complexity, memory for speed, etc.)

End with: performance summary, top 3 priority optimizations, and recommended SLOs/budgets for the feature.

Files

LICENSE

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2024 Seth Hobson

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.

Requirements and compatibility

Written for: Claude Code

Works with: Claude Code

“Works with” means the tool reads the open Agent Skills format; a skill written for one tool may use features others lack.

Security

No issues found by our static scan· No issues found

A static scan is not a guarantee. Skills are third-party content: review a skill before you let an agent use it.

Attribution and licence

Created by
Seth Hobson
Publisher
Seth Hobson (Community)
Source
wshobson/agents · plugins/backend-development/agents/performance-engineer.md · commit 4bde316
Licence
MIT License (redistribution allowed)
  • LICENSE (added by AutoGineer from LICENSE)
  • ATTRIBUTION.md (written by AutoGineer)
Synced

AutoGineer is not affiliated with or endorsed by Seth Hobson or Seth Hobson.

Download ZIP

The ZIP holds the skill’s files, its licence files and an ATTRIBUTION.md. Download backend-development-performance-engineer.zip