- docs/profiling.md: new "Profiling the render path" section — headless
step() doesn't render; automation.screenshot() forces a render but PNG
encoding then dominates (~96% of instructions in libsfml stbi_zlib_compress),
burying engine work. Guidance: profile update/animation with step()-only,
subtract stbi_* for the render path. Alludes to the Hybrid Scene
Serialization wiki proposal (QOI + UI-tree serialization) as a faster
capture path that would also de-noise screenshot-driven profiling.
- tests/benchmarks/profile_workload.py: reusable full-loop driver (textured
grid + moving entities + animated nested UI, forced renders). This is the
workload that surfaced #348.
Refs #345, #348.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
John McCardle
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