Presence polling pays a full query (and, if riding Heartbeat, part of the WP bootstrap) on every tick, even though most ticks in a quiet room find nothing changed. On cheap shared hosting (few PHP-FPM workers, no guaranteed object cache), that cost matters more than on managed hosting, and it compounds if other features end up polling on a separate schedule instead of sharing this one.
Three independent techniques, tracked as sub-issues below. Each needs its own before/after measurement (ties to #132) rather than shipping on intuition, since they're not equally impactful.
Tracking issue only — no code here.
Use of AI Tools
AI assistance: Yes
Tool(s): Claude Code
Model(s): Claude Sonnet 5
Used for: Assisting with investigation and drafting
Presence polling pays a full query (and, if riding Heartbeat, part of the WP bootstrap) on every tick, even though most ticks in a quiet room find nothing changed. On cheap shared hosting (few PHP-FPM workers, no guaranteed object cache), that cost matters more than on managed hosting, and it compounds if other features end up polling on a separate schedule instead of sharing this one.
Three independent techniques, tracked as sub-issues below. Each needs its own before/after measurement (ties to #132) rather than shipping on intuition, since they're not equally impactful.
Tracking issue only — no code here.
Use of AI Tools
AI assistance: Yes
Tool(s): Claude Code
Model(s): Claude Sonnet 5
Used for: Assisting with investigation and drafting