Operator-flagged 2026-05-30 (round 3): the all-parallel fetch was fast
but could let later chunks arrive ahead of earlier ones — even when
each chunk is a random sample, that "later chunk loads first" risk made
the load order non-deterministic. And the original goal behind asking
for batching was a faster first-image-on-screen, which neither sequen-
tial nor parallel really addressed cleanly.
Switched the loadInitial flow to a PIPELINE:
- Only one fetch in flight at any moment (in-order arrival, no race).
- The NEXT fetch kicks off as soon as the current one resolves (NOT
after its trickle finishes), so the next RTT overlaps the visible
trickle window — round-trips are hidden behind the animation cadence.
- PAGE 5 → 3 + INITIAL_BATCHES 12 → 20 (total still 60). Smaller chunk
→ first chunk's items appear sooner (a chunk of 3 trickles in 240ms,
well within one RTT, so by the time chunk 2 is in-hand the first
trickle is just finishing).
Trickle, sequence-token guard, and infinite-scroll behaviour unchanged.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
bvandeusen
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