Keep my computer smooth under load (smoothLoadEnabled master toggle)

What it is

"Keep my computer smooth under load" is a master on/off switch in Settings → Performance (on by default) for Omniscio's load-smoothing behaviors — the things Omniscio does so that running many Claude sessions at once doesn't bog your machine down. It is the umbrella control: turn it off and every load-smoothing behavior reverts to Omniscio's older, pre-smoothing behavior; turn it on (the default) and Omniscio quietly reduces the background work each session does.

Today this toggle governs one concrete behavior — how Omniscio checks each session's context-usage (below). It is built as a master switch so future smoothing behaviors fold under the same single control instead of adding a new toggle each time.

Where to find it

Settings → Performance → "Keep my computer smooth under load (recommended)" — on by default. Flipping it takes effect immediately (no restart): the next turn-complete consults the live setting. Works on every platform (it governs process-launch behavior, not an OS-specific feature).

How it behaves

The behavior it controls today: turn-complete-only, gated context checks

While a session is running, Omniscio checks how full its context window is so it can show the 75% / 90% context warnings (and the optional context indicator). Getting the authoritative number means launching a short-lived claude --resume … /context helper process. With one or two sessions that's nothing; with many sessions running at once, the old behavior — launching one of those helper processes for every session every ~90 seconds (and again repeatedly mid-turn) — piled up into real CPU cost and could make the whole app feel laggy.

With the toggle on, Omniscio makes two changes. First, it stops polling in the background entirely: the authoritative /context launch happens once per turn, at turn-complete, not on a 90-second timer. Second, it only pays that cost when something will actually use the result and the session is worth checking: it skips the launch when no warning and no indicator are enabled, and (on the warning-only path) it skips it for any session whose free running fullness estimate (computed every turn, no process launched) says it is comfortably below the warning band (under 60% full). Sessions that are actually approaching the band still get the accurate check; if the context indicator is on, the under-60% skip is bypassed so the indicator still gets the real number.

Crucially, no warning is ever missed. The free estimate is refreshed every turn and drives a cheap warning check that runs at the end of every turn regardless of the gate. The authoritative number refreshes at each turn-complete the moment a session is in range, and keeps refreshing through the entire 75% / 90% warning range. The only place Omniscio allows a slightly-stale authoritative number is below 60%, where there is no warning to show anyway.

With the toggle off, Omniscio reverts to its older behavior: a 90-second background poll plus an unconditional /context launch at the end of every turn, for every running session — no gating.

When to turn it off

Leave it on unless you have a specific reason. Turn it off if you want Omniscio's exact previous behavior — e.g. you're debugging context-poll timing, or you want the authoritative context number refreshed for every session continuously (on the 90-second background poll) regardless of how empty it is. Off trades smoothness under heavy load for that continuous refresh.

How you can tell it's working

When the fullness gate skips a session's turn-complete check, Omniscio writes a single per-session log line the first time that session gets gated (a transition marker, not one line per turn) — visible in development builds. It's there so the skip rate is measurable and so a "my context bar looks stale" report has a trace to follow. In normal use you won't see anything: the app just stays smoother when many sessions run.

Related performance controls

Other independent toggles in the same Performance section address different load symptoms:

• Session CPU cap — bounds the combined CPU of all Omniscio sessions (Windows).
• Ease RAM pressure by paging busy sessions — trims working sets when memory is tight (Windows).
• Boost Omniscio interface priority — keeps Omniscio's own window responsive under load (Windows).

This toggle is cross-platform and reduces work done, where those reduce resources consumed — they compose.

How it's verified

• tests/unit/process/context-budget-manager.test.ts — the fullness-gate block: skips the helper-process launch when both fullness signals are below 60%, launches when either crosses 60%, launches unconditionally when the toggle is off (legacy behavior), and fails open (launches) when no estimate exists yet; plus the once-per-session skip-log and its re-arm.
• tests/unit/shared-types.test.ts — the setting defaults to true.

Why default on

Most users never think about context polling, and the gating is safe by construction (no warning is missed, and it fails open when fullness is unknown). Shipping it on means everyone gets the smoother behavior under load without having to discover a setting; the toggle exists for anyone who wants the exact prior behavior back.

For agents

Implementation pointers

• src/main/process/context-budget-manager.ts — maybeQueryContextAtTurnEnd(session) (the once-per-turn entry point: skip when no warning/indicator consumer; warning-only path applies the fullness gate, indicator-on path passes bypassFullnessGate; legacy smoothLoadEnabled === false spawns unconditionally), isBelowContextPollGate(usage, windowTokens) (the pure fail-open helper, MAX of the authoritative contextInfo.percent and the free lastTurnInputTokens proxy divided by the session's REAL per-model window — 1M on Opus 4.8, not a flat 200k — threshold CONTEXT_POLL_FULLNESS_GATE_PERCENT = 60), the gate inside querySessionContext (getSettings().smoothLoadEnabled !== false && isBelowContextPollGate(session.usageInfo, session.contextWindowTokens), after the recovery gate, before the helper-process launch), and startContextPollTimer which early-returns (no-op) unless smoothLoadEnabled === false.
• src/renderer/src/features/settings/PerformanceSettings.tsx — the smoothLoadEnabled toggle definition in PERFORMANCE_DEFINITIONS (defaultValue: true).
• Behavior lock: context-warning-contract.md invariant I13.

Related

• System cache cap — the other freeze this part of the product guards against.
• Severe lag background pacing — how background starts are paced when the app is already lagging.