The harness had a single endpoint returning a 12-byte set_content() body.
That is the one case where the response line, the headers and the body
already share a single write(), so any change to the write path measured
as noise. Comparing a gather-write branch against its merge base reported
0.993x at p = 1.000 while the same branch moved static-file throughput by
a quarter and TLS throughput by nearly half in both directions.
The server now also serves a large set_content() body and small and large
files from a mount point, over HTTPS when a certificate is given, with
--path, --large-mib and --tls selecting the combination.
ab.sh now compiles the harness from the invoking worktree instead of each
ref's own copy, so both refs run an identical workload and a ref that
predates a harness change stays measurable. Only httplib.h varies, through
-I. --timeout is exposed because bombardier's 2s default aborts large TLS
responses, which then fails the non-2xx check.