docs: make the issue tracker the source of truth
CI / check (push) Skipped
CI / e2e (push) Skipped
CI / check (pull_request) Successful in 2m28s
CI / e2e (pull_request) Successful in 6m9s

Work has been starting from a chat message and a plan file, so two
people could pick up the same thing and neither could see the other.
The tracker is where that is visible.

Search before starting, claim before the first edit -- not before the
commit, since the point is that the other person can see the work is
taken while it is being done. If no issue covers it, open one first:
that is what makes the tracker a description of the project rather than
a description of the past.

The conventions were already right and are written down rather than
reinvented -- the Kind/Area/Priority/Platform/Reviewed/Status taxonomy,
its exclusive scopes, #73 as the roadmap, real Gitea dependencies for
hard blockers, and PR #83's body shape.

What #83 also demonstrated is that a Closes list closes nothing
reliably: it listed ten and five of them sat open in main for a
fortnight. So closing is a step you take and verify, not a keyword you
trust.

.planning/ stops being a queue and keeps design documents and measured
history -- NOTES.md, the audits, the completed plans and the arguments
in them. plans/pending/ is gone, because a plan nobody is executing is
an issue; everything unimplemented in it is now #85-#91, and each
completed plan says which issue carries its remainder. autotag.md is
kept as a historical record, marked stale where the scoring overhaul
overtook it.

The commit grammar is unchanged and is load-bearing for a different
reason, so the issue number lives in the branch name and the PR body
rather than the commit subject.

Refs #92
This commit is contained in:
2026-08-18 16:23:52 -04:00
parent ae82fd2233
commit eb139cf872
8 changed files with 97 additions and 202 deletions
@@ -0,0 +1,160 @@
# 012 — What we ask the network for, and what we already had
> **Completed.** Findings 1, 2 and 4 shipped. Finding 3 — the bound-but-uncalled methods — is now **#86**.
**Status:** all four findings fixed. Lint (3 configs), Go tests (3
configs), `tsc` and 752 Vitest tests pass; **not driven against the
real app**, so the numbers below are read off the code, not measured.
One claim in the audit was wrong and is corrected in finding 3:
`CheckLibraryMBIDs` is *not* dead — `downloadcatalog.go:152` calls it.
It has no *frontend* caller, which is what was checked and not what was
written.
**Branch:** none yet
**Created:** 2026-08-13
**Related:** 010 (owned albums offline), 011 (owned artists' discography)
---
## Scope
Every frontend call site that can reach the network, and the backend
method behind it. The question asked of each: *is there a local answer
first, and if we do go out, do we go out once for many things or many
times for one?*
## What is already right, and is the standard the rest is measured against
- **Every catalog read is index-first.** `LookupArtist`,
`LookupReleaseGroup`, `BrowseReleaseGroups`,
`TopRecordingsForArtist`, `TopReleaseGroupsForArtist`,
`SimilarArtists` and `ResolveReleaseGroupMBIDs` all answer from
`explore_index` / `similar_artist_map` and only fall through on a
miss — several kick a background fetch and return empty rather than
blocking, with a `*Ready` event to re-read.
- **Album art has the right shape:** seed from the library, one
`GetThumbnails` batch that is *cached-only by contract*, then
per-item `GetThumbnail` calls that stream in
(`explore-view.ts:1445`). Nothing waits on a batch of network
fetches.
- **Artist art has the right shape in exactly one place:**
`seedSimilarArtistImagesFromLibrary`
(`explore-artist-details.ts:1627`) — library store, then disk-only
`GetArtistImageCachedPath`, fired in parallel, zero network calls.
It is the model for finding 1.
## Finding 1 — Explore's artist images: no disk check, and serial
`explore-view.ts:1526-1546`. `loadArtistImages` seeds from
`libraryStore.cachedArtists` — i.e. **owned artists only**, which on a
catalog search is a small minority of results — and then, for every
remaining artist:
```ts
const url = await GetArtistImageURL(a.mbid); // in a for loop
```
Two faults, both fixed by patterns already in the codebase:
- **No cached-path pass.** `GetArtistImageCachedPath` and
`GetArtistImageCached` are disk-only and free, and neither is used
here. An artist whose portrait is already on disk from a previous
search still takes the resolution path.
- **`await` in a loop.** `GetArtistImageURL` is the *resolving* entry
point: on a miss it does MB artist-rels (on the 1/s artist-image
limiter) → Wikidata → Wikipedia → a Wikimedia image download. Serial
awaits mean 8 unresolved artists are 8 of those end to end, each
blocking the next, while the equivalent album-art path fires all of
them at once.
The same "resolver used where a cache check belongs" appears at
`top-results-row.ts:218` and `artist-details.ts:207` (both fire in
parallel, so only the first fault applies, and both are small-N).
**Fix:** disk-cached pass first, then network in parallel. A
`GetArtistImagesCached(mbids []string) map[string]string` mirroring
`GetThumbnails` would make it one IPC call instead of N — see finding 4
for why that is not `GetArtistImages`.
## Finding 2 — The artist page prefetches tracklists twice, or four times
`prefetchReleases` (`explore-artist-details.ts:1531`) is called from
**both** `fetchTopReleaseGroups` (:1467) and `fetchReleaseGroups`
(:1506), and `PrefetchReleases` fires up to **8** `BrowseReleases` per
call — the most expensive request the app makes (every version of a
release group, with `recordings` and `media`).
The top release groups are a subset of the discography, so the two
calls are asking about overlapping sets; the backend's
`BrowseReleasesCached` guard stops a *literal* repeat, which means the
second call spends its 8 slots on the next 8 uncached albums rather
than doing nothing. One page view is therefore up to 16 browses — and
on a cold artist, `ArtistDiscographyReady` re-runs both fetchers
(:945, :948), taking it to 32.
Worse, some of that is now provably wasted: since tag-derived
completeness landed (`dcc40b1`), **a complete, MBID-matched album opens
with no catalog call at all**, so warming its tracklist buys nothing.
**Fix, in order of value:**
1. Prefetch once, from the union of both lists, after both resolve.
2. Skip release groups that are owned and complete —
`GetAlbumCompleteness` already answers this locally.
3. Revisit the cap of 8 with the other two in place. Plan 010 flags
the same number from the other direction.
## Finding 3 — Batch helpers with no caller (one of which was live)
`CheckLibraryMBIDs`, `GetPopularityBatch` and `GetArtistImages` are
bound to the frontend and have **no call site in `frontend/src`**.
They are the batch shapes a future N+1 would want, and their existence
is presumably why the N+1s above were not noticed.
**`CheckLibraryMBIDs` is not dead** — `downloadcatalog.go:152` calls
it from Go, one MBID at a time. Deleting it broke the build, which is
how that was found; it is kept, with a comment saying who its consumer
is. Read "no frontend caller" as exactly that, and grep both languages
before removing a bound method.
Note `GetArtistImages` is not the helper finding 1 needs: it resolves
names through `libMBID.AllArtistMBIDs()`, so it only answers for
artists **in the library** — the exact set Explore's search results are
not. Either give it an MBID-keyed sibling or replace it.
Also bound with no caller, and worth a separate decision about whether
the feature is live at all: `GetTrackLyrics`, `GenerateMix`,
`GetArtistPlayCount`, `GetLibrarySimilarArtists`,
`GetCandidateThumbnail`.
## Finding 4 — One more background pass with no job and no priority
`BackfillLibraryLyrics` (`lyrics.go:129`) is a bare `go` call: bounded
by passes and per-track (LRCLIB has no batch endpoint, so per-track is
correct), but with no `jobs` registration and no
`WithBackgroundPriority` marking. It runs on its own limiter, so it
starves nothing today — but it is invisible and uncancellable, which is
the gap 011 just closed for the other two backfills.
## Not a finding, recorded so it is not re-audited
- `GetThumbnails` returning only cached entries is deliberate and
documented; the per-item follow-up is the streaming half, not an
N+1.
- `explore-artist-details` calling both `TopReleaseGroupsForArtist`
(50) and `BrowseReleaseGroups` (200) reads overlapping rows from the
index twice, but both are local queries feeding two different
sections. Not worth merging.
- The newest components (`home-view`, `catalog-scope-notice`,
`page-header`, the notification stack, `shortcuts-overlay`) make no
network calls at all. `home-view` is `GetShelves` + `GetAlbumTracks`,
both local.
## Done when
- An Explore search with no owned artists in it makes zero artist-image
network calls for portraits already on disk, and resolves the rest
concurrently.
- Opening an artist page issues one prefetch pass, over albums that are
not already fully owned.
- The bound-but-uncalled batch helpers are either wired or removed.