Stop burning CPU on decoration: idle mascots, hidden polls, lazy sidecar

[milind-soni]

Why

An iPhone 17 Pro simulator left on the roster overnight sat at ~41% CPU (OpenMausCompanion) with SimRenderServer at ~38% for 8 hours. Two audits traced it: every mounted mascot face was an always-on animation loop — 30fps TimelineView+Canvas per chat row on iOS, a 60fps rAF loop per avatar on desktop whose paused check ran after re-arming — and the computer drawer's preview polls ran at full cadence regardless of visibility or bot activity. On a real phone this is battery, not just heat.

What changed

Motion is now signal, not decoration — animation is opt-in on both platforms.

• iOS: animated defaults to false in MausAvatar/BotAvatarView/ChatAvatarView. Opt-in sites: roster rows and the chat header only while the bot's state shows activity (listening/thinking/searching/working — new MausState.showsActivity), the open profile sheet, and the needs-you island. Opted-in faces also stop when scenePhase != .active, and the island's comet orbit (the costliest draw path) goes still 30s after appearing, so an unattended approval can't keep a 30fps orbit running until morning.
• Desktop: the rAF loop parks on a 4Hz wake-poll while paused instead of ticking at display rate; sidebar rows animate only for busy/unread/motion-beat bots (states are keyword-derived, so "working" can be decorative — busy/unread are the real signals); decorative avatar strips are still.
• Computer drawer: cloud (4s), Local VM (3s), host ScreenCaptureKit (3s), adb devices (2s), and phone screencap (850ms) polls all gate on document.visibilityState and drop to a 30s heartbeat when the bot is idle.
• Companion sidecar: interface-table poll 5s → 30s (its only recurring wakeup).

Deliberately deferred

Pausing idle Local VM containers (the other big idle burner: a full Linux desktop per bot runs for 8h after last use). docker pause reports paused containers as Running, so the status parser and the turn/screenshot/panel choke points all need to learn the state and unpause lazily — that deserves its own PR against the fresh #332 lease fences, not a rider here. Design notes in the commit message.

Verification

• Renderer + companion: typecheck clean, 377 tests green locally.
• iOS: compile-checked by CI's Swift job (behavioral change is prop defaults + a scenePhase gate).
• Audit reports (two independent agents, one per platform) available on request.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

Summary by CodeRabbit

• New Features
  • Avatar animations now appear selectively for active, busy, or attention-needed states.
  • Avatars pause when the app is inactive or the page is hidden, while respecting Reduce Motion settings.
  • Activity indicators can remain animated briefly when attention is needed.
• Performance
  • Background polling and screen previews pause when the page is hidden.
  • Idle devices and bots use less frequent polling, while active bots remain responsive.
  • Address monitoring now checks every 30 seconds instead of every 5 seconds.

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Project	Deployment	Actions	Updated (UTC)
openmausbot-docs	Ready	Preview	Aug 24, 2026 5:17pm

[coderabbitai]

Caution

Review failed

The pull request is closed.

ℹ️ Recent review info

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: defaults

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro Plus

Run ID: c49aee0a-cdb0-4733-8169-14397b4cefed

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between c2dc783 and 92a6664.

📒 Files selected for processing (13)

• companion/src/advertise-watch.ts
• ios/App/AgentProfileView.swift
• ios/App/BotAvatarView.swift
• ios/App/ChatListView.swift
• ios/App/ChatView.swift
• ios/App/Island.swift
• ios/App/MausAvatar.swift
• ios/App/MausFaceData.swift
• src/components/AndroidDevicePanel.tsx
• src/components/ComputerPanel.tsx
• src/components/CursorAvatar.tsx
• src/components/Sidebar.tsx
• src/lib/page-visible.ts

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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

The change reduces background polling and animation. It adds page visibility handling for web capture, makes avatar animation opt-in, enables activity-based animation in iOS and web views, and increases companion address-watch polling to 30 seconds.

Changes

iOS avatar activity

Layer / File(s)	Summary
iOS animation contract ios/App/BotAvatarView.swift, ios/App/MausFaceData.swift, ios/App/MausAvatar.swift	Avatar animation is now opt-in. Activity states identify listening, thinking, searching, and working. Animation also requires an active scene and remains disabled by Reduce Motion.
Context-specific animation wiring ios/App/AgentProfileView.swift, ios/App/ChatListView.swift, ios/App/ChatView.swift, ios/App/Island.swift	Profile, chat, and list avatars receive explicit animation state. NeedsYouIsland enables animation and comets for the displayed chat, then disables them after 30 seconds or when the chat changes.

Web visibility-aware polling

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Visibility-aware device capture src/lib/page-visible.ts, src/components/AndroidDevicePanel.tsx	usePageVisible tracks document visibility. Android status polling and screen capture pause while the page is hidden.
Activity-aware computer polling src/components/ComputerPanel.tsx	Cloud, Local VM, and macOS capture poll faster for busy bots and every 30 seconds for idle bots. Hidden pages stop capture polling.
Paused avatar scheduling src/components/CursorAvatar.tsx	Paused avatars use a 250 ms wake timer instead of continuous animation frames. Cleanup cancels the timer and animation frame.
Sidebar avatar usage src/components/Sidebar.tsx	Static sidebar avatars disable animation. Active bot rows enable it for busy, unread, or mascot-motion states.

Companion advertisement polling

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Advertisement watcher interval companion/src/advertise-watch.ts	The default network advertisement check changes from 5 seconds to 30 seconds. The documentation describes the updated cadence.

Estimated code review effort: 3 (Moderate) | ~20 minutes

Sequence Diagram(s)

sequenceDiagram
  participant Browser
  participant usePageVisible
  participant ComputerPanel
  participant CaptureSource
  Browser->>usePageVisible: emit visibilitychange
  usePageVisible->>ComputerPanel: provide visible state
  ComputerPanel->>CaptureSource: poll at activity-based cadence
  ComputerPanel->>CaptureSource: pause polling when hidden

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Suggested reviewers: aivsomkar, willsigmon

✨ Finishing Touches

📝 Generate docstrings

• Create stacked PR
• Commit on current branch

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests
• Commit unit tests in branch perf/idle-cpu

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