Sircles Work Session

1. Server Stability & Midnight UTC Analysis

Engineering reported on the recurring daily CPU spikes at midnight UTC. While an earlier fix addressed AWS Elastic Beanstalk log rotation, a new 30–40% spike was identified, traced to an OS-level "system performance summary" job. This job, required at the Linux level, has also been shifted to 11:00 AM UTC to avoid peak user disruptions. To further lighten the load, the team is disabling unnecessary console logging on production servers and refactoring backend code to keep only essential debugging logs.

2. New Architecture: Frame-by-Frame Comparison

To systematically address "jank" in the new architecture, Jerry is creating side-by-side, frame-by-frame video comparisons between the old and new builds. Initial recordings of the onboarding flow have confirmed significant visual differences. This video analysis will be used to pinpoint exact moments where the UI shifts, skips frames, or fails to render as smoothly as the previous version.

3. Lottie Animation Refactoring

The team identified heavy Lottie files (some up to 3 MB) as a primary source of phone stuttering during onboarding. To resolve this, engineering recommends remaking these assets using the Lottie editor rather than Adobe After Effects, which can reduce file sizes to roughly 100 KB and enable them to run on the phone's hardware GPU instead of software. The team plans to prioritize optimizing high-impact animations, such as the rotating globe in the onboarding flow.

4. Reanimated and 3D Effects

A significant challenge remains with the "Reanimated" library (Version 3) in the new architecture, which is struggling with complex 3D effects used during onboarding, such as the SOT screen rotation. These effects currently skip frames or jump directly to the end of the animation. As a temporary solution to maintain a smooth experience, the team will replace these 3D flips with simpler slide-in or fade-in transitions while they evaluate a potential migration to Reanimated Version 4.

5. Podcast Player & Internal Link Previews

Build 16 is being prepared with a high-priority fix for the podcast player to ensure it continues playing when a user navigates between different chats. Additionally, the team successfully implemented dynamic sizing for link previews by pulling dimensions from the backend, which has eliminated the "scrolling jumps" seen in previous builds. Internal links have also been fixed to navigate users directly within the app instead of opening an external web browser.

6. YouTube Permission Errors

A new issue surfaced where YouTube trailers on user profiles are failing to play. The team suspect that changes in YouTube's permissions or configuration are blocking the current video player. Engineering is investigating whether using the official YouTube API can overcome these restrictions to restore functional video previews.

7. Strategic Web View & Moderation

The web view is now technically live, featuring a new "infinite scroll" library that has significantly improved performance . The team is refining the manual screening queue for web-based messages to ensure high content quality during the rollout to active communities . For moderators, the flag portal has been updated to hide already-banned users and allow for a more detailed "one-click" review of suspicious account activity.