performance-optimization

performance-optimization is a skill for Claude Code from gamedev-skills/awesome-gamedev-agent-skills. It costs 121 tokens per session (2,186 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A measurement-led method for finding and fixing game slowdowns. It uses an engine profiler to determine whether the processor or graphics hardware is the bottleneck before changing code.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to investigate frame-time problems and apply fixes such as reusing objects, reducing draw calls, avoiding repeated memory allocations, and setting asset budgets.
Why use it?
It prevents developers from guessing at optimizations that may not address the real problem. The process focuses effort on the largest cause of low or uneven frame rates, stutters, and hitches.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the disciplines plugin — 15 skills shipped together , and of gamedev

Good fit Use it to investigate frame-time problems and apply fixes such as reusing objects, reducing draw calls, avoiding repeated memory allocations, and setting asset budgets.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/gamedev-skills/awesome-gamedev-agent-skills/performance-optimization
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.

Any agent
npx skills add gamedev-skills/awesome-gamedev-agent-skills --skill performance-optimization
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/gamedev-skills/awesome-gamedev-agent-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install disciplines, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 15 skills.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for performance-optimization

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/gamedev-skills/awesome-gamedev-agent-skills/performance-optimization/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/gamedev-skills/awesome-gamedev-agent-skills/performance-optimization)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/gamedev-skills/awesome-gamedev-agent-skills/performance-optimization"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/gamedev-skills/awesome-gamedev-agent-skills/performance-optimization/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for performance-optimization

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/gamedev-skills/awesome-gamedev-agent-skills/performance-optimization"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/gamedev-skills/awesome-gamedev-agent-skills/performance-optimization.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 121 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,186 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. Third-party audits
  • Socket pass 9 Aug 2026
  • Snyk pass 9 Aug 2026
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
How audits are shown
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 5.1 $0.00121 $0.02186
Opus 5 $0.00060 $0.01093
Sonnet 5 $0.00024 $0.00437
Haiku 4.5 $0.00012 $0.00219

Measured 11d ago against content hash ddfc68c927f9, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

performance-optimization 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 11d 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.

Origin

Copies of this mod

1 near-identical copy found in the catalogue:

skills/disciplines/performance-optimization/SKILL.md · 161 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 161 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Performance optimization

Performance work is a measurement discipline, not a bag of tricks. The method is always the same: profile → find the one bottleneck → fix that → measure again. This skill teaches that loop and the highest-leverage fixes (pooling, batching, allocation control, asset budgets), and points you at each engine's profiler. It pairs with physics-tuning for simulation cost.

When to use

  • Use when the frame rate is low or uneven, the game stutters/hitches, or it must hit a target (60 FPS desktop, 30/60 mobile) and currently doesn't.
  • Use to decide what to optimize: profile, read the frame budget, and identify whether the CPU or GPU is the bottleneck before changing any code.
  • Use to apply specific fixes: object pooling, draw-call/batch reduction, removing per-frame allocations and GC spikes, and setting asset budgets.

When not to use: for physics jitter/tunneling/timestep specifically, use physics-tuning. For the engine's concrete profiler UI and rendering settings, use that engine skill (godot-export covers some build settings; engine cores cover the rest). This skill is the cross-engine method and the shared fixes.

The golden rule: measure first, never guess

Most performance "fixes" applied without profiling target the wrong thing and add complexity for no gain. Do not optimize code you have not measured. Open the profiler, find the single biggest cost in a representative scene on representative hardware, and fix that. Re-measure to confirm the fix helped before moving on. Profile a release/optimized build where it matters — editor and debug builds lie (editor overhead, no compiler optimization).

Core workflow

  1. Define the target and reproduce. State the goal (e.g. 60 FPS = 16.67 ms/frame) and find a repeatable worst-case scene. "Sometimes slow" is unfixable; a reproducible spike is fixable.
  2. Profile before touching code. Run the engine profiler and read the frame: total frame time, and the split between CPU (game logic, physics, scripts) and GPU (rendering).
  3. Find the bottleneck — CPU or GPU. If GPU time ≫ CPU, attack draw calls/overdraw/shaders/ resolution. If CPU time dominates, attack scripts/physics/allocations. Fixing the wrong side does nothing.
  4. Fix the single biggest cost. Prefer an algorithmic win (do less work, cache, spatial partition, run less often) over micro-optimizing a hot line. Apply the matching shared fix (pooling, batching, allocation removal).
  5. Re-measure on the same scene/hardware. Confirm the number moved. Keep or revert based on data, not intuition.
  6. Set budgets so it stays fixed. Per-frame ms budgets per subsystem, plus asset budgets (texture sizes, triangle counts, draw-call ceilings); add a perf check to verification.
  7. Report measured numbers. State before/after frame time, the bottleneck found, and the fix — never "should be faster". If you could only measure in-editor, say so.

Read the full file on GitHub · 161 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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. 11d ago First seen · 161 lines · 121 tokens per session scan A ddfc68c927f9

Subscribe to this mod's changes

performance-optimization is a skill published in the GitHub repository gamedev-skills/awesome-gamedev-agent-skills (929 stars, last pushed today), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 121 tokens to every session and 2,186 once invoked, about $0.0006 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 2026-08-30.