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coder/coderd
Ethan 11481d7bed perf(coderd/chatd): reduce lock contention in instruction cache and persistStep (#23144)
## Summary

Two targeted performance improvements to the chatd server, identified
through benchmarking.

### 1. RWMutex for instruction cache

The instruction cache is read on every chat turn to fetch the home
instruction file for a workspace agent. Writes only occur on cache
misses (once per agent per 5-minute TTL window), making the access
pattern ~90%+ reads.

Switching from `sync.Mutex` to `sync.RWMutex` and using
`RLock`/`RUnlock` on the read path allows concurrent readers instead of
serializing them.

**Benchmark (200 concurrent chats):**
| | ns/op |
|---|---|
| Mutex | 108 |
| RWMutex | 32 |
| **Speedup** | **3.4x** |

### 2. Hoist JSON marshaling out of persistStep transaction

`MarshalParts`, `PartFromContent`, `CalculateTotalCostMicros`, and the
`usageForCost` struct population are pure CPU work that ran inside the
`FOR UPDATE` transaction in `persistStep`. They have zero dependency on
the database transaction.

Moving all marshal and cost-calculation calls above `p.db.InTx()` means
the row lock is held only for `GetChatByIDForUpdate` +
`InsertChatMessage` calls.

**Benchmark (16 goroutines contending on same lock):**
| Tool calls | Inside lock | Outside lock | Speedup |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 13,977 ns/op | 1,055 ns/op | 13x |
| 5 | 38,203 ns/op | 3,769 ns/op | 10x |
| 10 | 67,353 ns/op | 7,284 ns/op | 9x |
| 20 | 145,864 ns/op | 14,045 ns/op | 10x |

No behavioral changes in either commit.
2026-03-18 16:12:14 +11:00
..