optimize-performance

A guided workflow for finding and fixing code that runs too slowly.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to measure a program, locate its real performance bottleneck, improve the relevant code, and report the result.
Why use it?
It helps avoid optimizing based on guesses, which can waste time or make code harder to maintain.

Command for Cursor

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add commands/emaraschio/cursor-commands/optimize-performance
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/emaraschio/cursor-commands

Made for: Cursor.

Per session 11 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 398 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00011 $0.00398
Opus 5 $0.00005 $0.00199
Sonnet 5 $0.00002 $0.00080
Haiku 4.5 $0.00001 $0.00040

Measured 2d ago against content hash 36707ee9068f, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

optimize-performance scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

.cursor/commands/optimize-performance.md · 38 lines

What it actually says

Overview

Profile and optimize performance bottlenecks. Full workflow: .cursor/skill-contracts/optimize-performance/SKILL.md (user install: ~/.cursor/skill-contracts/optimize-performance/SKILL.md).

Defaults

None. See skill for workflow defaults.

Steps

  1. Read .cursor/skill-contracts/optimize-performance/SKILL.md for the full agent contract; if that file is missing, read ~/.cursor/skill-contracts/optimize-performance/SKILL.md.
  2. Execute the workflow in order; do not skip safety steps.
  3. Report outcomes per skill (summary, tables, or checklist as specified).

Anti-patterns

  • Measure before optimizing. Trigger: a suspected performance problem. Wrong: rewriting code based on a guess about what is slow. Correct: profile to find the real bottleneck, then optimize it. Reason: unmeasured optimizations often target the wrong code and add complexity for no gain.
  • Do not trade readability for micro-gains. Trigger: a change that shaves a negligible amount of time. Wrong: obscuring the code for an unmeasurable speedup. Correct: keep the readable version unless the gain is significant and measured. Reason: unreadable code costs more in maintenance than a micro-optimization saves.

Examples

  • /optimize-performance

Maintainers

Behavioral eval: .cursor/skill-contracts/optimize-performance/eval/cases.md. Ship gate sections: A, S before changing SKILL.md or this command.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 2d ago First seen · 38 lines · 11 tokens per session scan A 36707ee9068f

Subscribe to this mod's changes

optimize-performance is a command published in the GitHub repository emaraschio/cursor-commands (9 stars, last pushed 26d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 11 tokens to every session and 398 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.