[lucasbraum]

Closes UPT-103.

What and why

After UPT-100/101/104/106, Uptide's cost is at or below Claude Code's on the pilot repositories (#169). Wall time is the gap. This PR measures where the time goes and makes two cuts. Neither one changes the gate after the agent's edits or the final verification.

1. Per-phase commands in the fix report (d0a77c3). Each phases[] entry now has runs: the repository's commands the phase ran (install, generate, build, types, tests, lint, format), each with a count and its summed wall time. An agent-led run's clean install (#220) gets its own clean-install phase, so the phases add up to the run. The tables below come from this field.

What the baseline showed. These are the costs I could act on, across the three repos:

• node_modules copies around the install. isolatedUpgrade installs in a temporary worktree. It then cpSyncs the new node_modules into the clone, file by file and not even copy-on-write, and deletes the worktree. In a $0 replay with a CPU profile (invalid API key, no model spend), that copy was 7.5 s on enki and 5.1 s on dms-saas. npm itself took only about 10.5 s of enki's 31 s install.
• Test runs in the agent phase on dms-saas: 2 runs, 42.6 s. It is the largest line item there apart from the model. The agent's run_tests asks for the task's related tests. But dms-saas's test script is pnpm run build && … && pnpm run test:unit, so related scoping found no bare runner and ran the whole script, build included.

The model's own time is the largest item everywhere (about 31 s, 71 s and 50 s), but I found no deterministic cut for it (see "What did not work").

2. The agent's own test check runs its runner's related tests (26574a9). This is a new agentCheck test option, used only by the agent's own run_tests. When a test script ends by running a script that is just the runner, the check runs that runner's related tests. Everything else is unchanged:

• The gate after the agent's edits still runs its own related plan (the whole script on dms-saas).
• The final verification runs the full suite.
• A check result never stands in for a gate result: separate cache entries.
• Where the narrowing changes no command (calmcp, enki: the script already is the runner), the check stays the gate's own run, and the gate reuses its result on the same tree, as before.

3. The installed tree is moved, not copied (049023c). isolatedUpgrade renames the new node_modules out of the worktree, which is removed anyway. The tree is the same, links into the worktree are relocated as before, and it falls back to a copy across filesystems (EXDEV).

Results

The #169 harness (bench/run.sh), Uptide arm only, claude-sonnet-5-5 at medium effort, default $1 limit, once per repository. Before is origin/main plus the counting commit d0a77c3 (no behavior change). After is 049023c; the last commit only adds a test. bench/ is untracked in both checkouts, which is why both reports say uptideDirty. Claude Code's numbers are from the #169 rerun (same harness and model).

repo	Claude Code (#169)	Uptide before	Uptide after
calmcp, zod 3.25.76→4.6.5	$0.11, 47 s	$0.094, 60 s	$0.085, 53 s
dms-saas, stripe 18.5.0→22.6.2	$0.31, 149 s	$0.265, 224 s	$0.279, 210 s
enki, react 18.3.1→19.2.0	$0.11, 67 s (its diff fails npm ci)	$0.176, 147 s	$0.161, 136 s

Same checks, same verdicts, same diff shape. On every repository, before and after match on all of these:

• verification.passed (true)
• the site outcomes: calmcp 1 mechanical + 5 agent, dms-saas 2 + 10, enki 3 + 8 + 1 manual
• the changed file list: 4, 11 and 12 files, identical
• test, lint and build statuses, and no new type errors
• feedback rounds: 0, 0 and 1
• enki's clean install, which passed

One run each: the model's own time moves by ±5 s between runs, which is the size of calmcp's whole change.

calmcp phases

line item	before	after
wall (harness)	60 s	53 s
cost	$0.094	$0.085
outside fix(): preflight, clone with node_modules copy, delivery, clone removal	3 s	3 s
analyze (check; workspace prep builds)	5.7 s	5.5 s
baseline phase	3.3 s	3.2 s
↳ baseline type-check	1× 0.8 s	1× 0.8 s
↳ baseline tests	1× 1.8 s	1× 1.8 s
install phase (bump install, consumed rebuild, target types)	6.1 s	4 s
↳ upgrade install	1× 4.8 s	1× 2.8 s
agent phase	38.2 s ($0.094)	33.5 s ($0.085)
↳ checks inside it (types, lint, format)	0.9 s	1 s
↳ tests inside it (agent check + gate)	2× 1.8 s	2× 1.9 s
↳ model and tool turns (the rest)	35.5 s	30.6 s
feedback rounds	0: –	0: –
final verify (build, format, full tests, types, lint)	2.6 s	2.7 s
clean install (agent-led, #220)	–	–
installs, all phases	1× 4.8 s	1× 2.8 s
tests, all phases	4× 5.1 s	4× 5.3 s
type-checks, all phases	8× 2.7 s	8× 2.7 s
builds (buildRuns)	2× 0.7 s	2× 0.6 s
generators	2× 0 s	2× 0 s
publish	not run (no --pr in the harness)	not run
agent turns	19	17

dms-saas phases

line item	before	after
wall (harness)	224 s	210 s
cost	$0.265	$0.279
outside fix(): preflight, clone with node_modules copy, delivery, clone removal	9 s	10 s
analyze (check; workspace prep builds)	23 s	22.7 s
baseline phase	25.8 s	25.5 s
↳ baseline type-check	1× 3.6 s	1× 3.7 s
↳ baseline tests	1× 21.6 s	1× 21.5 s
install phase (bump install, consumed rebuild, target types)	22 s	14.7 s
↳ upgrade install	1× 12.4 s	1× 5.3 s
agent phase	112.4 s ($0.265)	107.3 s ($0.279)
↳ checks inside it (types, lint, format)	1.5 s	1.3 s
↳ tests inside it (agent check + gate)	2× 42.6 s	2× 35.3 s
↳ model and tool turns (the rest)	68.4 s	70.7 s
feedback rounds	0: –	0: –
final verify (build, format, full tests, types, lint)	31.1 s	29.1 s
clean install (agent-led, #220)	–	–
installs, all phases	1× 12.4 s	1× 5.3 s
tests, all phases	4× 85.6 s	4× 76.6 s
type-checks, all phases	8× 11.4 s	8× 11.2 s
builds (buildRuns)	3× 13.5 s	3× 13.1 s
generators	2× 0 s	2× 0 s
publish	not run (no --pr in the harness)	not run
agent turns	34	34

enki phases

line item	before	after
wall (harness)	147 s	136 s
cost	$0.176	$0.161
outside fix(): preflight, clone with node_modules copy, delivery, clone removal	11 s	11 s
analyze (check; workspace prep builds)	12.8 s	12.7 s
baseline phase	7 s	7 s
↳ baseline type-check	1× 2.8 s	1× 2.6 s
↳ baseline tests	1× 3.9 s	1× 4.1 s
install phase (bump install, consumed rebuild, target types)	32.9 s	23 s
↳ upgrade install	1× 30.9 s	1× 21.1 s
agent phase	26.6 s ($0.085)	27.4 s ($0.085)
↳ checks inside it (types, lint, format)	1.1 s	1 s
↳ tests inside it (agent check + gate)	1× 1.1 s	1× 1.2 s
↳ model and tool turns (the rest)	24.4 s	25.2 s
feedback rounds	1: 44 s ($0.092)	1: 40.8 s ($0.076)
final verify (build, format, full tests, types, lint)	5.7 s	5.8 s
clean install (agent-led, #220)	6 s	7.7 s
installs, all phases	2× 36.9 s	2× 28.7 s
tests, all phases	5× 15.5 s	5× 16.3 s
type-checks, all phases	11× 15.3 s	11× 15 s
builds (buildRuns)	0× 0 s	0× 0 s
generators	2× 0 s	2× 0 s
publish	not run (no --pr in the harness)	not run
agent turns	17 + 19	17 + 13

Where the cuts show up:

• upgrade install: calmcp 4.8 → 2.8 s, dms-saas 12.4 → 5.3 s, enki 30.9 → 21.1 s.
• agent-phase tests on dms-saas: 42.6 → 35.3 s. The narrowed check took about 14 s instead of 21 s.

Tests on calmcp and enki: same counts and times as before.

What is left versus Claude Code

• calmcp, 53 s vs 47 s. About 31 s is the model: 17 turns, one tool call each. The other ~19 s is work Claude Code does not do in this form: analysis 5.5 s, install 4 s, baseline 3.2 s, final verify 2.7 s, clone and delivery 3 s.
• dms-saas, 210 s vs 149 s. Tests are the gap: four runs of the test script family take 76.6 s (baseline 21.5, agent check ≈14, gate ≈21, final ≈20).
  • Every full run builds before running vitest. vitest alone is about 17 s.
  • Related tests barely help here: every route imports the Stripe client, so "related" is most of the suite.
  • The gate and the final run are the verification this PR must not trade away.
  • The rest: analysis 22.7 s (the stripe 18→22 type diff and call-site compile) and the model, about 71 s for 34 turns.
• enki, 136 s vs 67 s. Claude Code's diff does not install (npm ci ERESOLVE), so it skipped what costs Uptide here: the upgrade install (21 s), the clean install (7.7 s) and the agent-led feedback round (41 s). The round is forced by the peer-blocker and root-pin fallback.

What did not work (reverted, not in this PR)

An intermediate build also (a) asked the agent to batch reads and edits as parallel tool calls in one message, and (b) narrowed the agent's check in feedback rounds. It ran on all three repos ("after (reverted)" runs 8e0f068f, d48a70c0, 72b2bc57):

• (a) changed nothing: dms-saas made the same 34 turns with the same tool counts.
• (b) made enki slower, 147 → 163 s. vitest related over the feedback task's files cost more than the full suite, and splitting the check from the gate lost the gate's cache hit.

Both are reverted. The final change keeps the check on the gate's run wherever narrowing changes nothing.

How it was verified

Fixture tests:

• generic.test.ts, "narrows only the agent's own check, …" (3 cases) — the final verify still runs the full gate. It covers a chained script, a plain runner, and an agent-led run. It records every test call and its options and checks:
  • the order is baseline full, agent check, gate (as before), final full suite;
  • the final call is fullSuite without related;
  • the verify phase built, type-checked and ran tests once each;
  • the agent-led run ran its clean install (fix: unsafe root pins become agent-led drafts, with a clean-install gate (UPT-102) #220) and it passed.
• fix.test.ts, "scopes only the agent's own check to the runner a test script chain ends with": agentCheck gives vitest related …, while related alone and fullSuite still give the whole pnpm run build && pnpm run test:unit.
• sdk-agent.test.ts: the agent's run_tests uses checkTests, repeats reuse its own result, and the gate on the same tree still runs tests.
• isolated-install.test.ts: the clone's node_modules holds the same inode the install wrote (a move, not a copy). Relative links are kept and absolute links into the worktree are relocated.
• generic.test.ts phases test: the baseline phase's runs counts its type-check and test run.

pnpm lint && pnpm typecheck && pnpm test pass (core 2,292 tests, cli 516). The bench runs needed no fork PRs: nothing was pushed anywhere but this branch.

Checklist

• Tests for the change
• pnpm lint && pnpm typecheck && pnpm test pass
• README and docs updated if behavior changed (no CLI flag or documented output changed; the report field is described in types.ts)
• Changeset added (agent-phase-wall-time.md)
• No new dependency
• No private code, names or paths in fixtures, tests or docs
• The rules in CONTRIBUTING.md ("Rules that do not bend") still hold

🤖 Generated with Claude Code