react-performance-critical

A set of React performance guidelines for speeding up loading and asynchronous work. It covers avoiding sequential network requests, loading code only when needed, and reducing unnecessary JavaScript in the browser.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when fixing slow data loading, Promise and async/await flows, large bundles, lazy loading, code splitting, barrel imports, or tree-shaking problems.
Why use it?
Sequential requests can make users wait longer, while oversized bundles delay the first screen. These patterns help work happen in parallel and keep unused code out of the initial load.

Cursor rule 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 rules/alonsarias/agent-rules/react-performance-critical
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/alonsarias/agent-rules

Made for: Cursor.

Per session 0 Nothing until a file matches its globs; then the whole rule loads.
When invoked 1,888 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 $0.00000 $0.01888
Opus 5 $0.00000 $0.00944
Sonnet 5 $0.00000 $0.00378
Haiku 4.5 $0.00000 $0.00189

Measured yesterday against content hash 926b14866a31, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

react-performance-critical 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 yesterday.

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/rules/react-performance-critical.mdc · 310 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 310 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

React Performance Critical Patterns

Performance optimization guide for React applications. Contains critical rules for eliminating async waterfalls and optimizing bundle size.

1. Eliminating Waterfalls (CRITICAL)

Waterfalls are the #1 performance killer. Each sequential await adds full network latency.

1.1 Defer Await Until Needed

Impact: HIGH - Avoids blocking unused code paths

Move await operations into the branches where they're actually used.

Incorrect: blocks both branches

async function handleRequest(userId: string, skipProcessing: boolean) {
  const userData = await fetchUserData(userId)

  if (skipProcessing) {
    return { skipped: true }
  }

  return processUserData(userData)
}

Correct: only blocks when needed

async function handleRequest(userId: string, skipProcessing: boolean) {
  if (skipProcessing) {
    return { skipped: true }
  }

  const userData = await fetchUserData(userId)
  return processUserData(userData)
}

Early return optimization:

// Incorrect: always fetches permissions
async function updateResource(resourceId: string, userId: string) {
  const permissions = await fetchPermissions(userId)
  const resource = await getResource(resourceId)

  if (!resource) {
    return { error: 'Not found' }
  }

  if (!permissions.canEdit) {
    return { error: 'Forbidden' }
  }

  return await updateResourceData(resource, permissions)
}

// Correct: fetches only when needed
async function updateResource(resourceId: string, userId: string) {
  const resource = await getResource(resourceId)

  if (!resource) {
    return { error: 'Not found' }
  }

  const permissions = await fetchPermissions(userId)

  if (!permissions.canEdit) {
    return { error: 'Forbidden' }
  }

  return await updateResourceData(resource, permissions)
}

1.2 Promise.all() for Independent Operations

Impact: CRITICAL - 2-10x improvement

When async operations have no interdependencies, execute them concurrently.

Read the full file on GitHub · 310 lines

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. yesterday First seen · 310 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A 926b14866a31

Subscribe to this mod's changes

react-performance-critical is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository alonsarias/agent-rules (4 stars, last pushed 6mo ago), licensed MIT. It costs nothing until one of its globs matches a file; then it loads 1,888 tokens. 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.