Avoid Premature Optimization¶

Do not add complexity for unmeasured or irrelevant performance gains.

Canonical interpretation¶

Optimize when evidence, scale analysis, or explicit budgets identify a real constraint.

Purpose¶

Do not add complexity for unmeasured or irrelevant performance gains.

Apply when¶

Measured behavior violates a budget or known scale constraint.
Memory, latency, throughput, or determinism is a first-class requirement.

This does not mean¶

Do not ignore known algorithmic explosions or hard real-time requirements.
Do not use the maxim to dismiss inexpensive efficient choices.

Trade-offs¶

Optimization usually increases complexity and narrows implementation freedom.
Benchmarks can mislead when they do not represent production workloads.

Conflicts with canonical entries¶

None recorded.

Broader policy tensions¶

hard-real-time-constraints
memory-limits

Reinforces canonical entries¶

make-it-work-right-fast
measure-dont-guess

Supports broader concerns¶

None recorded.

Core Skill ownership¶

Primary owner: performance-and-resources

Positive example¶

Profile a request path before introducing cache invalidation complexity.

Counterexample¶

Add caching layers everywhere because they might be faster.

Guidance for AI models¶

Apply this guidance only after considering the active project profile, constraints, and architecture authority.
State the concrete design consequence instead of citing the principle name as sufficient justification.

Editorial note¶

This page is generated from the canonical YAML entry. Edit principles/entries/premature-optimization.yaml and regenerate the compendium instead of editing this file directly.