intercom-performance-tuning

name	intercom-performance-tuning
description	Optimize Intercom API performance with caching, search optimization, and pagination. Use when experiencing slow API responses, implementing caching strategies, or optimizing request throughput for Intercom integrations. Trigger with phrases like "intercom performance", "optimize intercom", "intercom latency", "intercom caching", "intercom slow", "intercom pagination".
allowed-tools	Read, Write, Edit
version	1.6.0
license	MIT
author	Jeremy Longshore <[e-mail]>
tags	["saas","support","messaging","intercom"]
compatibility	Designed for Claude Code

Intercom Performance Tuning

Overview

Optimize Intercom API performance through response caching, efficient search queries, cursor-based pagination, connection pooling, and request batching.

Prerequisites

• intercom-client SDK installed
• Understanding of Intercom data model
• Redis or in-memory cache available (optional)

Authentication

All requests authenticate with an Intercom access token passed as a bearer token. Store it as INTERCOM_ACCESS_TOKEN in the environment and let the SDK read it — never hardcode it:

const client = new IntercomClient({ token: process.env.INTERCOM_ACCESS_TOKEN! });

For raw fetch calls, send Authorization: Bearer ${token}.

Intercom API Latency Baselines

Operation	Typical P50	Typical P95	Notes
GET /me (health check)	50ms	150ms	Lightest endpoint
GET /contacts/:id	80ms	200ms	Single lookup
POST /contacts/search	120ms	400ms	Depends on query complexity
GET /conversations/:id	100ms	300ms	Heavier with parts (up to 500)
POST /contacts (create)	150ms	400ms	Write operation
GET /contacts (list)	100ms	350ms	Paginated, 50 per page
POST /messages	200ms	500ms	Triggers delivery pipeline

Instructions

Apply these six techniques in order of impact. Each has a complete, copy-pasteable implementation in references/implementation.md; the summaries and the caching skeleton below are enough to follow the workflow at a high level.