A monsterously bad function before rewriting it. This was before rewriting it, inspired by @christoph-neumann and @justone in their Functional Design in Clojure podcast!!

before-cleaning-up.clj

(>defn interpret-photo-from-client
  " input: db, photo/id (uuid), prompt string (can be 'default'), and options map "
  [db uuid prompt & {:keys [async? model]
                     :or {async? false} :as opts}]
  [(? #(instance? xtdb.node.XtdbNode %)) uuid? string? (s/* (s/or :keyword keyword? :bool boolean?)) => map?]
  (log/warn :prompt-photo :model model :uuid uuid :async? async?)
  (let [
        record           (xtp/photo-xtdb-fresh-url-uuid db uuid)
        url              (-> record
                           :photo/url
                           vu/xform-url-size-big)
        b64              (-> url
                           (ol/url->stream)
                           (ol/stream-to-base64))
        prompt           (if (= prompt "default")
                           (slurp "resources-openai/images/podcast-screenshot.txt")
                           prompt)
        _                (log/warn :prompt-photo :prompt prompt)
        _                (log/warn :prompt-photo :async? async? :uuid uuid :url url)
        ;summary          (slurp "/tmp/summary")
        begin-ms (System/currentTimeMillis)
        ; must reutrn map
        summary          (time
                           (if (= model :gpt-4-vision-preview)
                             (let [retval (gpt4v/prompt-photo b64 prompt)
                                   _ (log/warn :prompt-photo :first-retval retval)
                                   interpreted (gpt4v/interpret-prompt-photo {:summary (-> retval :summary)})]
                               interpreted)

                             ; llava
                             (if async?
                               (ol/interpret-photo-async! b64 {:prompt prompt
                                                               :json? true})
                               (ol/interpret-photo-sync! b64 {:prompt prompt}))))
        _                (do
                           (def SUMMMARY summary)
                           (def UUID uuid)
                           (def RECORD record)
                           (def URL url)
                           (ol/write-decoded-base64-to-file b64 "/tmp/decoded.jpg")
                           (spit "/tmp/summary" summary)
                           0)
        elapsed-ms       (- (System/currentTimeMillis) begin-ms)
        ;new-photo-record (create-photo-summary-record-and-attach-to-parent! db uuid summary elapsed-ms)]
        retval {:url url
                :summary summary}]
    ;(def NEWRECORD new-photo-record)
    (log/warn :prompt-photo :elapsed elapsed-ms)
    (log/warn :prompt-photo :retval retval)
    retval))

It is now trivial to add back the timings under the various passes.