dotNetTips.Spargine.10

Get best practices for MSTest 3.x/4.x unit testing, including modern assertion APIs and data-driven tests

Ensure .NET/C# code meets best practices for the solution/project.

Correctly call native (C/C++) libraries from .NET using P/Invoke and LibraryImport. Covers function signatures, string marshalling, memory lifetime, SafeHandle, and cross-platform patterns. USE FOR: writing new P/Invoke or LibraryImport declarations, reviewing or debugging existing native interop code, wrapping a C or C++ library for use in .NET, diagnosing crashes, memory leaks, or corruption at the managed/native boundary. DO NOT USE FOR: COM interop, C++/CLI mixed-mode assemblies, or pure managed code with no native dependencies.

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).

Three-layer verification pipeline for AI output. Extracts verifiable claims, finds supporting or contradicting sources via web search, runs adversarial review for hallucination patterns, and produces a structured verification report with source links for human review.

Visual whiteboard collaboration for Copilot CLI. Creates an interactive whiteboard that opens in your browser — draw, sketch, add sticky notes, then share everything back with Copilot. Copilot sees your drawings and text, and responds with analysis, suggestions, and ideas.

Runs .NET tests with dotnet test. Use when user says "run tests", "execute tests", "dotnet test", "test filter", "filter by category", "filter by class", "run only specific tests", "tests not running", or needs to detect the test platform (VSTest or Microsoft.Testing.Platform), identify the test framework, apply test filters, or troubleshoot test execution failures. Covers MSTest, xUnit, NUnit, and TUnit across both VSTest and MTP platforms. Also use for treenode-filter, --filter-class, --filter-trait, and other framework-specific filter syntax. DO NOT USE FOR: writing or generating test code, CI/CD pipeline configuration, or debugging failing test logic.

Quick pragmatic detection-focused review of .NET test code for anti-patterns that undermine reliability and diagnostic value. Use when asked to audit test quality, investigate flaky or coupled tests, find duplication or magic values, or when tests pass but don't actually verify anything. Best for identifying and prioritizing issues in existing tests with severity-ranked findings and targeted remediation guidance. Catches assertion gaps, swallowed exceptions, always-true assertions, flakiness indicators, test coupling, over-mocking, naming issues, magic values, duplicate tests, and structural problems. Do NOT use for direct MSTest API rewrites or implementation-only fixes (for example swapped Assert.AreEqual argument order or converting `DynamicData` from `IEnumerable<object[]>` to `ValueTuple`) — use writing-mstest-tests instead. For a deep formal audit based on academic test smell taxonomy, use exp-test-smell-detection instead. Works with MSTest, xUnit, NUnit, and TUnit.

Get best practices for C# async programming

Scans .NET code for ~50 performance anti-patterns across async, memory, strings, collections, LINQ, regex, serialization, and I/O with tiered severity classification. Use when analyzing .NET code for optimization opportunities, reviewing hot paths, or auditing allocation-heavy patterns.

Automated, project-wide code coverage and CRAP (Change Risk Anti-Patterns) score analysis for .NET projects with existing unit tests. Auto-detects solution structure, runs coverage collection via `dotnet test` (supports both Microsoft.Testing.Extensions.CodeCoverage and Coverlet), generates reports via ReportGenerator, calculates CRAP scores per method, and surfaces risk hotspots — complex code with low test coverage that is dangerous to modify. Use when the user wants project-wide coverage analysis with risk prioritization, coverage gap identification, CRAP score computation across an entire solution, or to diagnose why coverage is stuck or plateaued and identify what methods are blocking improvement. DO NOT USE FOR: targeted single-method CRAP analysis (use crap-score skill), writing tests, running tests without coverage collection, applying test filters, producing TRX reports, or troubleshooting test execution (use run-tests for all of these).

Calculates targeted CRAP (Change Risk Anti-Patterns) scores for a named .NET method, class, or single source file. Use when the user explicitly asks to compute CRAP scores or assess risky untested code for a specific target, combining Cobertura coverage data with cyclomatic complexity analysis. DO NOT USE FOR: project-wide coverage analysis, coverage plateau or "stuck coverage" diagnosis, what's blocking coverage, or where to add tests across a project (use coverage-analysis); writing tests; running tests without CRAP context.