Non-functional requirements

The numbers this application is held to: how many frames a second on what hardware, how long a beat may take to reach the screen, how large the binary may be, what the audio thread may not do, and what has to be reproducible. Every “lightweight”, “real-time” and “stable frame rate” claim elsewhere means one of the figures below.

Each section is a budget with a measurement beside it, not an aspiration. Where a figure has moved, the decision that moved it is linked.

Sections

• 1. Performance — adaptive quality
• 2. Platform baseline
• 3. Latency — audio to visual
• 4. Size and dependencies
• 5. Real-time safety (testable restatement)
• 6. Determinism
• 7. CI
• 8. Distribution (v1)
• 9. Test hardware matrix (what the user has)
• 10. Live performance (added in the 2026-07-21 follow-up interview)
• 11. v1 UX scope (confirmed requirements, post-MVP plan)
• 12. Runtime memory