diff --git a/.jules/bolt.md b/.jules/bolt.md
index 4596c40..5897863 100644
--- a/.jules/bolt.md
+++ b/.jules/bolt.md
@@ -5,3 +5,7 @@
 ## 2024-05-10 - Optimize Math Operations with Lookup Tables
 **Learning:** When mathematical operations depend strictly on a small, discrete domain (e.g., converting 8-bit color components 0..255 from sRGB to linear space), utilizing pre-computed arrays or lookup tables instead of redundant on-the-fly computation (divisions, conditionals, `.pow()`) significantly improves performance in hot paths (over 20x improvement).
 **Action:** Identify finite input domains in hot paths and pre-calculate their results into arrays (like `DoubleArray(256)`) instead of doing continuous computations repeatedly.
+
+## 2024-06-25 - Local variable caching for array lookups in math hotpaths
+**Learning:** In highly mathematical operations (like `matrixMultiply` in `halogen-core`), caching repeated array lookups (e.g. `row[0]`, `matrix[0]`) into local variables noticeably reduces the overhead of bounds-checking and pointer deference.
+**Action:** Unroll fixed-size vector and matrix array accesses into local variables.
diff --git a/halogen-core/src/commonMain/kotlin/halogen/color/MathUtils.kt b/halogen-core/src/commonMain/kotlin/halogen/color/MathUtils.kt
index 0aa82c8..92caf01 100644
--- a/halogen-core/src/commonMain/kotlin/halogen/color/MathUtils.kt
+++ b/halogen-core/src/commonMain/kotlin/halogen/color/MathUtils.kt
@@ -62,9 +62,19 @@ internal object MathUtils {
         180.0 - abs(abs(a - b) - 180.0)
 
     fun matrixMultiply(row: DoubleArray, matrix: Array<DoubleArray>): DoubleArray {
-        val a = row[0] * matrix[0][0] + row[1] * matrix[0][1] + row[2] * matrix[0][2]
-        val b = row[0] * matrix[1][0] + row[1] * matrix[1][1] + row[2] * matrix[1][2]
-        val c = row[0] * matrix[2][0] + row[1] * matrix[2][1] + row[2] * matrix[2][2]
+        // Cache array elements in local variables to avoid redundant array bounds checking and
+        // pointer dereferencing in hot paths.
+        val r0 = row[0]
+        val r1 = row[1]
+        val r2 = row[2]
+
+        val m0 = matrix[0]
+        val m1 = matrix[1]
+        val m2 = matrix[2]
+
+        val a = r0 * m0[0] + r1 * m0[1] + r2 * m0[2]
+        val b = r0 * m1[0] + r1 * m1[1] + r2 * m1[2]
+        val c = r0 * m2[0] + r1 * m2[1] + r2 * m2[2]
         return doubleArrayOf(a, b, c)
     }
 }