When $sample is the first stage of an aggregation pipeline, the executor optimizes it with storage-engine support. This optimization could be extended to more use cases by moving $sample prior to stages that don't alter the number of documents that pass through it, including

• $project
• $addFields
• $lookup
• $sort

While most applications can ensure the $sample is first in the pipeline, there is one important use case where this is not possible: views. It's common for our own tools (mongodrdl, compass) to sample views, and often those views contain a pipeline consisting of only the above stages, and MongoDB will tack the $sample to the end of the view's pipeline. This optimization will improve the performance of that $sample by pushing it down to the storage engine.