Apify Performance Tuning

What it does

When your agent uses it

• Actors are slow
• Consuming too much memory
• Being blocked by target sites
• A crawl is too expensive per run

Example prompts

• “apify performance”
• “optimize apify actor”
• “apify slow”
• “/apify-performance-tuning”

Requirements

• A credential in APIFY_TOKEN
• Compatibility (from SKILL.md): Designed for Claude Code
• Pre-approved tools (allowed-tools): Read, Write, Edit

Workflow steps

6 steps, taken from the first numbered list in SKILL.md.

1. 1Measure a baseline. Pull runTimeSecs, requestsFinished, memAvgBytes, and usageTotalUsd from the run stats before changing anything. You…
2. 2Choose the right crawler. HttpCrawler/CheerioCrawler for static HTML or JSON (low memory, fast); PlaywrightCrawler/PuppeteerCrawler only…
3. 3Tune concurrency. Raise maxConcurrency for Cheerio (up to ~50); keep it low (~3-5) for browser crawlers because each page costs ~200MB…
4. 4Optimize memory. Push data immediately instead of accumulating arrays; for browser crawlers, block images/CSS/fonts in preNavigationHooks…
5. 5Right-size the memory allocation. Compute units bill on memory x duration — start low (512 MB for Cheerio) and only raise it if the Actor…
6. 6Rotate proxies and tune requests. Start on datacenter proxies, fall back to residential on 403/blocked; use a session pool for IP rotation…

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit cfae287. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

• Tool permissions

  Pre-approves these tools, so the agent can use them without asking each time:

  • Read
  • Write
  • Edit

  From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

• Runs code

  No scripts in the folder and no shell commands in SKILL.md (its code samples are typescript).

  From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

• Network

  Links to these hosts (documentation or services it may open):

  • docs.apify.com
  • crawlee.dev

  From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

• Credentials

  Names these keys or tokens, usually read from environment variables:

  • APIFY_TOKEN

  From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

• Compatibility

  Designed for Claude Code

  From compatibility in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

Context cost

Apify Performance Tuning loads about 1.6k tokens when it runs, and up to ~3.7k if it reads all its reference files. Until then it costs about 97 tokens; SKILL.md has 608 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it

~97

When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches

~1.6k

With references · SKILL.md plus every file in references/, read only if the agent opens them

~3.7k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from jeremylongshore/tons-of-skills-marketplace at commit cfae287, republished under its MIT licence (© jeremylongshore). 608 words, ~1,578 tokens.

name

apify-performance-tuning

description

Optimize Apify Actor performance: crawl speed, memory usage, concurrency, and proxy rotation. Use when Actors are slow, consuming too much memory, or being blocked by target sites, or when a crawl is too expensive per run. Trigger with "apify performance", "optimize apify actor", "apify slow", "crawlee concurrency", "apify memory tuning", "scraper performance".

allowed-tools

Read, Write, Edit

compatibility

Designed for Claude Code

version

1.5.0

license

MIT

author

Jeremy Longshore <jeremy@intentsolutions.io>

tags

saas, scraping, automation, apify

import { CheerioCrawler } from 'crawlee';
import { Actor } from 'apify';

const crawler = new CheerioCrawler({
  maxConcurrency: 50,             // Cheerio is cheap — parallelize hard
  maxRequestsPerMinute: 300,      // But cap the rate to protect the target
  requestHandler: async ({ $, request }) => {
    await Actor.pushData({ url: request.url, title: $('title').text().trim() });
  },
});

© jeremylongshore, MIT. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

SKILL.md and 2 other files (references) in skills/.curated/apify-performance-tuning of jeremylongshore/tons-of-skills-marketplace.

• SKILL.md
• references/implementation.md
• references/monitoring.md

Open the folder on GitHubat commit cfae287