If Maestro’s UI feels laggy or sluggish - typing that can’t keep up, slow agent or tab switching, a panel that stutters when it opens - you can capture a performance trace and send it to us. A trace tells us exactly where the app is spending its time, which is far more actionable than a description of “it feels slow.”
The fastest way is built right into the app and needs no setup. There’s also an advanced React profile for when we ask for component-level render data.
Capture a trace from the app (recommended)
The built-in profiler records what Maestro is doing while you reproduce the slowness, then saves it as a single compressed file you can send us. It works on any installed build - no developer tools, no source checkout.
Step 1: Start profiling
Open the command palette with Cmd+K (Ctrl+K on Windows and Linux), type profiling, and choose Debug: Start Performance Profiling.
While a trace is recording, the wand icon in the top-left corner glows red and pulses. That’s your reminder that profiling is on - it keeps running until you stop it.
Step 2: Reproduce the slowness
With recording on, do the things that feel slow:
- Typing in the prompt input
- Switching between agents in the Left Bar
- Switching tabs, or opening a file
- Opening the Right Bar, Settings, or the image editor
- Whatever feels sluggish in your normal workflow
Keep it short and focused. A few seconds of the actual slow behavior is far more useful to us than minutes of everything. If you’re chasing one specific lag, reproduce just that, two or three times.
Step 3: Stop profiling and save
Open the command palette again (Cmd+K) and choose Debug: End Performance Profiling. This option only appears while a recording is active.
Maestro opens a Save dialog with a default name like maestro-profile-2026-06-28T14-30-00.zip on your Desktop. Pick a location and save. A progress window then shows the capture being stopped and compressed - a large trace can take tens of seconds to zip, so the bar keeps you posted until the file is written.
Step 4: Send us the trace
Attach the .zip to one of:
Include a quick note about what you were doing when it lagged (for example, “typing in the prompt with 30+ agents in the Left Bar”). That context helps us line the trace up with the moment of slowness.
What’s in the trace
The .zip contains two files:
| File | Contents |
|---|
trace.json | The raw timeline of rendering, layout, and JavaScript activity during the capture |
metadata.json | Your Maestro version, OS, CPU, memory, and how long the recording ran |
A trace can contain file paths and script URLs from your machine. Give the file a quick look before posting it in a public GitHub issue, or send it to us privately on Discord if you’d rather not share those openly. The most useful trace is a focused 5-10 second capture of the one action that feels slow. Start recording, reproduce it a couple of times, stop. Short and targeted beats long and broad every time.
Advanced: React component profile
When we’re chasing a specific re-render problem we may ask for a React profile instead. It captures component-level render timing and requires running Maestro from source. This process takes about 5 minutes and captures only React rendering metrics.
Prerequisites
- Node.js and npm installed
- Maestro cloned from source (
git clone https://github.com/RunMaestro/Maestro.git) with dependencies installed (npm install)
- Close the production Maestro app before starting - dev mode with production data shares the same data directory
Maestro is an Electron app, so the browser extension won’t work. Install the standalone React DevTools instead:
This opens React DevTools in its own window. Leave it running - Maestro connects to it automatically in dev mode.
Step 2: Start Maestro with your production data
In a separate terminal, from the Maestro repo:
This launches Maestro in development mode but uses your real data directory - same agents, sessions, groups, and configuration you use day-to-day. You should see all your existing agents populate in the Left Bar.
Make sure the production Maestro app is fully closed first. Running both simultaneously against the same data directory can cause conflicts.
npx react-devtools) and then restart Maestro (Ctrl+C and re-run npm run dev:prod-data).
Step 3: Start profiling
- In the React DevTools window, click the Profiler tab (next to “Components”)
- Click the blue Record button (circle icon) to start profiling
- You should see a “Profiling…” indicator confirming it’s recording
Before recording, open the Profiler settings (gear icon) and enable “Record why each component rendered while profiling”. This gives us the most useful diagnostic data.
Step 4: Reproduce the slowness
With profiling active, perform the actions that trigger lag (switching agents, scrolling long conversations, opening modals, typing in the input area). Reproduce the slow behavior 2-3 times, then stop. A short, targeted profile is far more useful than a 10-minute recording of everything.
Step 5: Stop profiling
Click the Record button again (it turns from red back to blue) to stop recording. The Profiler renders a flamegraph and ranked chart showing all the React commits (re-renders) it captured.
Step 6: Export and send the profile
- In the Profiler tab, click the export button (the down-arrow icon in the top-left area of the profiler panel)
- Save the
.json file somewhere accessible (e.g., your Desktop)
- Attach it to a GitHub Issue or a Discord message
The exported React profile contains only React rendering metrics:
| Included | Not Included |
|---|
| Component names and render durations | Conversation content |
| What triggered each re-render | API keys or tokens |
| Render counts per component | File contents from your projects |
| Component tree structure | Personal data |
