Continuous Profiling
Where did computation actually go? Not “CPU is 82%” but “this function consumed 40% of the time in these specific requests.” A sensor of resource reality.
Continuous profiling samples production execution to show where CPU, memory, allocations, and lock contention actually occur — not in synthetic benchmarks, but in real traffic.
Sensor properties
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Oracle strength | Medium — shows where resources go, not whether it’s correct |
| Independence | High — production samples |
| Scope | System-level |
| Feedback latency | Seconds |
| Actionability | Exploratory — you profile to find bottlenecks |
| Type | Retrospective |
What it cannot detect
Profiling shows resource consumption, not correctness. A function that consumes 40% of CPU may be doing the wrong thing efficiently.