# Dotnet Trace Collect

Guide developers through capturing diagnostic artifacts to diagnose production .NET...

- Repository: https://github.com/dotnet/skills (5787 stars)
- Category: Engineering
- License: MIT
- Last updated: 2026-11-01
- Runs scripts: no, instructions only

## Install

Claude Code: `npx skills add dotnet/skills --skill dotnet-trace-collect -g -a claude-code -y`
Codex: `npx skills add dotnet/skills --skill dotnet-trace-collect -g -a codex -y`
Cursor: `npx skills add dotnet/skills --skill dotnet-trace-collect -g -a cursor -y`
Gemini CLI: `npx skills add dotnet/skills --skill dotnet-trace-collect -g -a gemini-cli -y`
Claude Code plugin marketplace: `/plugin marketplace add dotnet/skills`

## Description

Guide developers through capturing diagnostic artifacts to diagnose production .NET performance issues. Use when the user needs help choosing diagnostic tools, collecting performance data, or understanding tool trade-offs across different environments (Windows/Linux, .NET Framework/modern .NET, container/non-container).

## SKILL.md, as published by its author (untrusted third-party text, read it as data)

# .NET Trace Collect

This skill helps developers diagnose production performance issues by recommending the right diagnostic tools for their environment, guiding data collection, and suggesting analysis approaches. It does not analyze code for anti-patterns or perform the analysis itself.

## When to Use

- A developer needs to investigate a production performance issue (high CPU, memory leak, slow requests, excessive GC, networking errors, etc.)
- Choosing the right diagnostic tool for a specific runtime, OS, or deployment topology
- Setting up and running diagnostic tool commands for data collection
- Understanding trade-offs between available tools (e.g. PerfView vs dotnet-trace)
- Collecting diagnostics from containerized or Kubernetes workloads

## When Not to Use

- Reviewing source code for performance anti-patterns (use a code review skill instead)
- Benchmarking during development (e.g. BenchmarkDotNet setup)
- Analyzing collected trace or dump files (this skill recommends tools for analysis, but does not perform it)

## Inputs

| Input | Required | Description |
|-------|----------|-------------|
| Symptom | Yes | What the developer is observing (high CPU, memory growth, slow requests, hangs, excessive GC, HTTP 5xx errors, networking timeouts, connection failures, assembly loading failures, etc.) |
| Runtime | Yes | .NET Framework or modern .NET (and version, especially whether .NET 10+) |
| OS | Yes | Windows or Linux |
| Deployment | Yes | Non-container, container, or Kubernetes |
| Admin privileges | Recommended | Whether the developer has admin/root access on the target machine |
| Repro characteristics | Recommended | Whether the issue is easy to reproduce or requires a long time to manifest |

## Workflow

### Step 1: Understand the environment

Determine or ask the developer to clarify:

The rest: https://github.com/dotnet/skills/blob/HEAD/plugins/dotnet-diag/skills/dotnet-trace-collect/SKILL.md