Yardmaster or my computer feels slow
The fixes for a sluggish app or a computer that freezes while agents work, cheapest first: a few switches, a restart, and freeing memory.
When the app lags or the whole computer stalls while agents work, the cause is almost always memory or background load, not the number of sessions. Yardmaster is built to slow its agents down before it slows you down, and the switches below give it more room to do that.
Start here: turn on Lite mode#
Open Settings > Performance.
Turn on Lite mode (optimize for a less powerful computer).
One switch turns on Low Power Mode, holds new sessions when memory is low, releases memory from idle sessions on Windows, staggers loading at startup and stops keeping extra chats ready in the background. Turn it off and your previous settings come back.
If Yardmaster ever offered you a Make Yardmaster lighter button, it turns on this same switch.
Restart Yardmaster#
A restart frees memory a long-running app has collected and picks up any speed fixes from an update. Sessions that were working come back on their own; see Sessions come back after a crash or restart.
Free memory#
Stop sessions you are not using. Open Manage sessions from the toolbar's ... menu and stop the ones you do not need, or archive finished ones.
Let idle sessions give memory back. Release idle sessions to reclaim more RAM (under Show advanced, on at first after 15 minutes) frees about 250 to 450 MB from each session that has been waiting on you. The chat stays on screen; your next message reloads it.
Close other heavy programs, such as browsers with many tabs.
The window lags while you type or scroll#
Low Power Mode drops blur, heavy animations and shadows. It takes effect at once.
Real-conversation layout (under Show advanced, on at first) shows only your messages and the agent's final replies, folding tool work into an "N actions" pill. It is the biggest saving on busy chats; check it is still on.
Keep GPU Acceleration on. Turning it off makes everything slower, unless you are chasing a graphics glitch.
Long jobs stall when you step away#
Your computer may be going to sleep. Turn on Keep computer awake while sessions are running (off at first). It stops the computer sleeping only while a session is working; the screen can still turn off. It works on Windows and macOS.
If Yardmaster closed or crashed while the computer was asleep, the same switch helps. You can also quit Yardmaster before the computer sleeps. Sessions that were working come back when you open it again.
Your drive is filling up#
Yardmaster keeps everything in one database file. It hands freed space back to your drive by itself, a little at a time while your computer is not busy. To shrink it all at once:
Open Settings > Diagnostics and find the Session Turns Cache card, which shows your Database size.
Click Reclaim disk space, then Clear & schedule.
Restart Yardmaster when it suits you. The file shrinks while the app starts.
Your conversations are not affected.
If your database was created by an older Yardmaster, you may see "Reclaiming disk space..." once while it starts, even though you did not click the button. That one-time step lets it free space in the background from then on, with no restart.
A test or build will not stop#
When agents run tests, builds or dev servers in your projects, one can keep running after its session is done and hold your processor. Job Monitor lists the test, build and dev server processes it detects, with their CPU and memory use, so you can stop the one that is stuck.
Open Settings > Optional Features and turn on Show Job Monitor in sidebar (off at first).
In the sidebar, open Developer Tools, then Job Monitor.
Click Kill on the stuck row and confirm.
Let an agent look#
On Windows and macOS, the Tidy my computer mission is a guided check of what is using your disk: open a project with no sessions, click Run a guided mission and pick Tidy my computer. It shows what it finds and asks before changing anything.
Still slow?#
The Health tab of Settings > Diagnostics keeps two timing logs: Startup Trace for a slow launch (Reveal Startup Log) and Interaction Trace for laggy clicks and typing (Reveal Interaction Log). Attach them to a report; see Report a problem or ask for help.
If your computer still freezes for seconds at a time with many agents running, it is short of memory. Adding memory (RAM) helps more than a faster processor.
Windows only, under Show advanced: Cap CPU when many sessions are running (off; sessions share at most 50% of the processor when other programs want it, 25 to 90%), Reserve a CPU core for Yardmaster so the window never freezes (off; for hybrid Intel processors) and its follow-on Make the reserved core truly dedicated.
On by default, under Show advanced: Let sessions yield to your foreground apps and Let sessions yield the disk to the app run your agents at lower priority, so the app and your other programs go first. Leave them on.
Isolated session view (experimental) (off) draws the open session in its own process so it stays quick while the rest of the app is busy. It uses roughly one extra process's memory.
Hold new sessions when memory is low (off; part of Lite mode) pauses bursts of new sessions until memory frees up. A session you open yourself is never held.
Reclaim space from old archived sessions (Diagnostics, off) clears hidden helper output from sessions archived over 14 days ago, after a full backup.
Performance & interaction tracing (Diagnostics, on) writes the timing logs above. Turning it off stops that logging and its small overhead.
Related
- Install YardmasterDownload Yardmaster, open it for the first time, and check that your computer can run several agents at once.
- Clean up finished worktreesFor people whose sessions work in separate copies of a git project: Yardmaster removes a copy once its work has a pull request, and the Dev Pipeline panel can tidy the rest on a schedule.
- Let your agents remember how you workYour Personal Corpus keeps short notes about you, such as your preferences and decisions, so each new session already knows them. Only you and your agents see it.