adaptive-enforcement-lab/efficiency-patterns

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 |

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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 |

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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

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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 |

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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 |

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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 |

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Idempotency makes retries safe. Work avoidance makes retries unnecessary.

References

• Source Documentation
• AEL Patterns