core-foundations-performance-values

name	core-foundations-performance-values
description	Performance as an always-on value, all tracks — performance engineering is proactive, not testing: objectives grounded in business goals, checkable criteria, and integration into every phase from design onward.

Performance Values

Performance is not a phase. This skill sets the always-on stance; each phase has its own performance skill for the mechanics (core-build-performance-engineering, core-verify-performance-verification, core-operate-observability). Adapted from DX's What is performance engineering? and the Microsoft Engineering Fundamentals Playbook's Performance NFR.

Areas under consideration

• The proactive stance — engineering, not testing
• Objectives → criteria → every-phase integration framework
• Default budgets by project type — web vitals targets, app startup, API latency (p50/p99)
• Perceived vs actual performance — when optimistic UI / skeletons / streaming are mandatory
• What is built fast from the start vs deliberately deferred
• Regression policy — what happens when a change blows a budget
• Cost as performance — where infra/model cost counts as a performance dimension

Skill

Engineering, not testing

Performance testing is reactive — it finds bottlenecks after the code exists. Performance engineering is proactive — performance is embedded in every phase from conceptual design onward. The same proactive-versus-reactive logic applies to every quality attribute (availability, security, …): this stance generalizes.