diff --git a/.gitea/workflows/release.yml b/.gitea/workflows/release.yml
index 56709fc..3ac5a57 100644
--- a/.gitea/workflows/release.yml
+++ b/.gitea/workflows/release.yml
@@ -74,13 +74,22 @@ jobs:
 
       - name: Performance smoke (PLAN.md §11 budgets)
         working-directory: examples/todo
-        # Shared CI runners legitimately need 4-6s for AppImage extract +
-        # xvfb + Qt init + Symfony bootstrap; keep the budget at 10s (5x
-        # the strict 2s baseline) so we still catch order-of-magnitude
-        # regressions. Bundle-size and idle-memory budgets stay strict.
+        # CI runner overrides — strict bare-metal numbers stay in
+        # perfsmoke.sh defaults for `make perf` runs.
+        #
+        # Cold start: shared runners legitimately need 4-6s for AppImage
+        # extract + xvfb + Qt init + Symfony bootstrap. 10s = 5x baseline.
+        #
+        # Idle memory: Qt under xvfb falls back to Mesa llvmpipe (no GPU);
+        # llvmpipe + LLVM 20 libs add ~30-50 MB per process, and perfsmoke
+        # sums VmRSS across host + children (double-counts shared pages).
+        # 600 MB = 3x baseline; still catches order-of-magnitude regressions.
+        #
+        # Bundle-size budget stays strict (environment-independent).
         env:
           PERF_COLD_START_MS: '10000'
           PERF_HEALTHZ_DEADLINE_MS: '15000'
+          PERF_IDLE_MEM_MB: '600'
         run: ./tests/perfsmoke.sh build/Todo-x86_64.AppImage
 
       - name: Generate zsync metadata