perf(tui): shave ~190ms off hermes --tui cold start

Two targeted fixes on the critical path from `hermes --tui` launch to
`gateway.ready`:

1. **Defer `@hermes/ink` import in memoryMonitor.ts.** The static top-level
   import dragged the full ~414KB Ink bundle (React + renderer + all
   components/hooks) onto the critical path *before* `gw.start()` could
   spawn the Python gateway — serialising ~155ms of Node work in front of
   it on every launch. `evictInkCaches` only runs inside the 10-second
   tick under heap pressure, so it moves to a lazy dynamic import. First
   tick hits the ESM cache because the app entry has long since imported
   `@hermes/ink`.

2. **Gate `tools.mcp_tool` import on config in tui_gateway/entry.py.**
   Importing the module transitively pulls the MCP SDK + pydantic + httpx
   + jsonschema + starlette formparsers (~200ms). The overwhelming
   majority of users have no `mcp_servers` configured, so this runs for
   nothing. A cheap `load_config()` check (~25ms) skips the 200ms import
   when no servers are declared, with a conservative fallback to the old
   behaviour if the config probe itself fails.

## Measurements (macOS Terminal.app, Apple Silicon, n=12)

| Metric                     | Before (p50) | After (p50) | Δ        |
|----------------------------|--------------|-------------|----------|
| Python gateway boot alone  | 252–365ms    | 105–151ms   | −180ms   |
| `hermes --tui` banner paint | 686ms        | 665ms       | −21ms    |
| `hermes --tui` → ready      | **1843ms**   | **1655ms**  | **−188ms (−10.2%)** |
| `hermes --tui` → ready p90  | 1932ms       | 1778ms      | −154ms   |
| stdev (ready)              | 126ms        | 83ms        | also more consistent |

## Tests

- `scripts/run_tests.sh tests/tui_gateway/ tests/tools/test_mcp_tool.py`:
  195 passed.  (The one pre-existing failure in
  `test_session_resume_returns_hydrated_messages` reproduces on main —
  unrelated, it's a mock-DB kwarg mismatch.)
- `ui-tui` vitest: 430 tests, all pass.
- `npm run type-check` in ui-tui: clean.

## Notes

- Node-side first paint ("banner") didn't move meaningfully because that
  latency is dominated by Ink's render pipeline + React mount, not by
  which imports load first.
- The win shows up entirely in the time from banner to `gateway.ready`
  — exactly where we expected it, since both fixes shorten the Python
  gateway's boot path or let it overlap more with Node startup.
- No user-visible behaviour change. Memory monitoring still fires every
  10s; MCP still works when `mcp_servers` is configured.
This commit is contained in:
Brooklyn Nicholson
2026-04-28 19:42:31 -05:00
parent 6b09df39be
commit 0399d4b976
2 changed files with 51 additions and 6 deletions

View File

@@ -165,11 +165,29 @@ def main():
# a model_tools.py module-level side effect; moved to explicit
# startup calls to avoid freezing the gateway's loop on lazy import
# (#16856).
#
# Cold-start guard: importing ``tools.mcp_tool`` transitively pulls the
# full MCP SDK (mcp, pydantic, httpx, jsonschema, starlette parsers —
# ~200ms on macOS), which runs on the TUI's critical path before
# ``gateway.ready`` can be emitted. The overwhelming majority of users
# have no ``mcp_servers`` configured, in which case every byte of that
# import is wasted. Check the config first (cheap — it's already been
# loaded once by ``_config_mtime`` elsewhere) and only pay the import
# cost when there's actually MCP work to do.
try:
from tools.mcp_tool import discover_mcp_tools
discover_mcp_tools()
from hermes_cli.config import load_config
_mcp_servers = (load_config() or {}).get("mcp_servers")
_has_mcp_servers = isinstance(_mcp_servers, dict) and len(_mcp_servers) > 0
except Exception:
pass
# Be conservative: if we can't decide, fall back to the old
# behaviour and let the discovery path handle its own errors.
_has_mcp_servers = True
if _has_mcp_servers:
try:
from tools.mcp_tool import discover_mcp_tools
discover_mcp_tools()
except Exception:
pass
if not write_json({
"jsonrpc": "2.0",