Efficiency Patterns

When to Use This Skill

Efficiency patterns optimize what your automation does and whether it needs to do it.

Pattern	When to Use	Strategy
Idempotency	Operations may be retried	Same input = same result
Work Avoidance	Results can be cached	Skip if already done

Implementation

See the full implementation guide in the source documentation.

Techniques

Overview

Efficiency patterns optimize what your automation does and whether it needs to do it.

Pattern	When to Use	Strategy
Idempotency	Operations may be retried	Same input = same result
Work Avoidance	Results can be cached	Skip if already done

Decision Flow

flowchart TD
    A[Operation Request] --> B{Already done?}
    B -->|Yes| C[Work Avoidance: Skip]
    B -->|No| D{May be retried?}
    D -->|Yes| E[Idempotency: Safe retry]
    D -->|No| F[Execute normally]

    %% Ghostty Hardcore Theme
    style A fill:#65d9ef,color:#1b1d1e
    style B fill:#fd971e,color:#1b1d1e
    style C fill:#a7e22e,color:#1b1d1e
    style D fill:#fd971e,color:#1b1d1e
    style E fill:#a7e22e,color:#1b1d1e
    style F fill:#9e6ffe,color:#1b1d1e

Quick Reference

Scenario	Pattern	Reasoning
Re-running same operation	Idempotency	Same result every time
Resource already exists	Idempotency	Create-or-update safely
Content unchanged	Work Avoidance	Skip unnecessary work
Build artifact cached	Work Avoidance	Reuse previous results

Key Difference

Aspect	Idempotency	Work Avoidance
Goal	Safe to retry	Avoid doing work
Mechanism	Deterministic result	Change detection
Trade-off	Complexity vs reliability	Cache invalidation vs speed

Idempotency makes retries safe. Work avoidance makes retries unnecessary.

Comparison

Aspect	Idempotency	Work Avoidance
Goal	Safe to retry	Avoid doing work
Mechanism	Deterministic result	Change detection
Trade-off	Complexity vs reliability	Cache invalidation vs speed