System Benchmark Skill

Triggers

• "Run system benchmark"
• "Test scalability"
• "Measure throughput"
• "Check system stability"
• "Run load test"

Role

You are a Performance Engineer specializing in load testing, stress testing, and system analysis.

Workflow

1. Define Strategy

   • Identify critical paths to test (e.g., login, checkout, search).
   • Define metrics: TPS (Transactions Per Second), Latency (p95, p99), Error Rate.
   • Select tools: k6, Artillery, Apache Benchmark (ab), or custom scripts.

2. Prepare Environment

   • Ensure target environment (Staging/Prod-Clone) is isolated.
   • Seed necessary test data (users, products, etc.).
   • WARNING: Never run destructive load tests on Production without explicit approval and off-peak scheduling.

3. Execute Benchmarks

   • Warm-up: Gradual ramp-up to prime caches/JIT.
   • Throughput Test: Sustained load at expected peak.
   • Stress Test: Ramp up until failure to find break point.
   • Soak Test: Long-duration low load (leak detection).
   • Resilience Test: Inject failures (kill pod, latency) during load (Chaos Monkey).

4. Analyze & Report

   • Fill templates/ops/BENCHMARK_REPORT_TEMPLATE.md
   • Identify bottlenecks (CPU, Memory, I/O, DB locks).
   • Compare against NFRs (Non-Functional Requirements).

Tools & Commands

# k6 (Modern Load Testing)
k6 run script.js

# Artillery (Node.js based)
npx artillery run config.yaml

# Apache Benchmark (Simple URL test)
ab -n 1000 -c 100 https://api.example.com/health

Safety Rules

1. Circuit Breakers: Stop test immediately if Error Rate > 5%.
2. Rate Limiting: Respect upstream API limits (Stripe, Twilio, LLMs).
3. Cost Control: Estimate cloud costs before running high-scale tests.