vac-optimizer/docs/benchmark/issue-302.md

# Issue #302: plan from the best-ranked obligation solution

Step-by-step record for [issue #302](https://gitea.nessar.fr/nessar/vac-optimizer/issues/302).
The exact steps keep planning outcomes, stable explanations and final states
identical to the frozen engine at `a871f8f`. The
[frozen-engine differential check](README.md#frozen-engine-differential-check),
including its cancelled asynchronous comparisons, passes after every step.

## Per-step measurements

Each step was timed against its parent in the same session, on the development
machine (AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D, WSL2, Bun 1.4.3), with no other test, build or
profiling workload running. Both commits' cores were bundled with the
frozen-engine build command and called through `calculatePlanningAsyncInternal`
in one Bun process, with `calculationDate: '2024-01-01'`. This is the
benchmark's in-thread asynchronous path, without the planning-calculation
service. For every scenario, each engine ran one warm-up and then one measured
calculation, alternating engines. Outcomes, explanations and final states were
hashed; every pair below matched. Only same-session pairs are comparable.

### Reuse the donor ranking across public-holiday weeks

For every public-holiday week, the holiday-week stage ranked every placement as
a potential donor by releasing it and evaluating the active objectives. That
ranking depends only on the plan, so the weeks of one plan now share each
placement's released objectives. Each week still skips its own dates and walks
the placements in the same order with the same yields.

| Scenario                    | Before (s) | After (s) |
| --------------------------- | ---------: | --------: |
| representative year         |       0.66 |      0.66 |
| typed obligations           |       5.11 |      4.89 |
| chained earned entitlements |       0.02 |      0.02 |
| deliberate conflict         |       0.01 |      0.01 |
| loaded year                 |      58.26 |     57.75 |
| two years                   |       2.27 |      1.82 |
| three years                 |       7.45 |      5.52 |

### Retain the best valid plan more cheaply

Retaining a better valid plan for cancellation reconciled its optimization
provenance. For every placement credited by an optimization rule, that
evaluated all active objectives with the placement released. Only the credited
objectives are compared, so the released plan now evaluates just those, and
the calendar observations of the other objectives are no longer computed.
Retention also no longer computes quality metrics that nothing read. An
instrumented three-year run spent 1.16 of its 1.22 retention seconds in that
reconciliation; afterwards retention took 0.26 seconds.

| Scenario                    | Before (s) | After (s) |
| --------------------------- | ---------: | --------: |
| representative year         |       0.45 |      0.37 |
| typed obligations           |       4.76 |      5.03 |
| chained earned entitlements |       0.02 |      0.02 |
| deliberate conflict         |       0.01 |      0.01 |
| loaded year                 |      55.59 |     53.58 |
| two years                   |       1.68 |      1.22 |
| three years                 |       5.29 |      3.85 |

The typed-obligations difference is run-to-run noise; its retention cost was
22 milliseconds.

### Yield between asynchronous slices without a timer

The asynchronous adapter yields roughly every eight milliseconds. Each yield
waited for a zero-delay timer: about 1.1 ms in Bun, and at least 4 ms in
browsers once timers nest. Browsers now yield through a message-channel task.
Bun runs port messages ahead of timers and incoming worker messages, so a
message-channel yield there kept cancellation and the heartbeat from running
until the calculation ended. Bun therefore yields with `setImmediate`, which
costs about 0.01 ms and lets both run between slices.

| Scenario                    | Before (s) | After (s) |
| --------------------------- | ---------: | --------: |
| representative year         |       0.37 |      0.31 |
| typed obligations           |       4.74 |      4.02 |
| chained earned entitlements |       0.02 |      0.01 |
| deliberate conflict         |       0.01 |      0.00 |
| loaded year                 |      53.80 |     46.90 |
| two years                   |       1.23 |      1.04 |
| three years                 |       3.86 |      3.21 |

The browser path was checked in headless Chromium 149 on the same machine, in a
dedicated worker with a 50 ms heartbeat timer, running the bundled core before
and after this step, alternating, twice each. The `three years` calculation took
3.92 and 3.89 seconds before and 2.70 and 2.66 seconds after; `representative
year` took 0.51 and 0.45 seconds before and 0.30 seconds after. The heartbeat's
largest gap stayed between 58 and 67 ms in every run. Cancelling `three years`
one second after the request returned the retained plan 3.9 to 4.0 ms after the
cancel message reached the worker, against 7.2 to 8.7 ms before. This is desktop
evidence, not a reference-phone measurement.

### Validate each optimization configuration once

Every objective evaluation revalidated its optimization configuration against
the catalog. Rule normalization already validates each configuration once per
calculation and keeps its own copy. The presets are constant, and the summed
variant of a valid configuration is valid because every catalog row accepts
the sum. The core therefore scores them without revalidating;
`evaluateOptimization` still validates for its other callers.

| Scenario                    | Before (s) | After (s) |
| --------------------------- | ---------: | --------: |
| representative year         |       0.35 |      0.30 |
| typed obligations           |       4.03 |      3.46 |
| chained earned entitlements |       0.01 |      0.01 |
| deliberate conflict         |       0.00 |      0.00 |
| loaded year                 |      48.12 |     44.03 |
| two years                   |       1.04 |      0.96 |
| three years                 |       3.35 |      3.03 |