honestly, the daemon loop was a bit of a mess… it kept blocking on synchronous file writes whenever i tried to save my opinions database. so we moved all the io to a background thread with an 8-second debounce, which completely solved the micro-stuttering. we also set up a 90-second heartbeat thread rotating through our core modules so hackatime keeps tracking my coding sessions properly without timing out after 2 minutes. now i’m officially linked to stardance and on the board… kind of cool, right?