Individual skill
incremental-build
Guide for optimizing MSBuild incremental builds. USE FOR: builds slower than expected on subsequent runs, 'nothing changed but it rebuilds anyway', diagnosing why targets re-execute unnecessarily, fixing broken no-op builds. Covers 8 common causes: missing Inputs/Outputs on custom targets, volatile properties in output paths (timestamps/GUIDs), file writes outside tracked Outputs, missing FileWrites registration, glob changes, Visual Studio Fast Up-to-Date Check (FUTDC) issues. Key diagnostic: look for 'Building target completely' vs 'Skipping target' in binlog. DO NOT USE FOR: first-time build slowness (use build-perf-baseline), parallelism issues (use build-parallelism), evaluation-phase slowness (use eval-performance), non-MSBuild build systems.
plugins/dotnet-msbuild/skills/incremental-build/SKILL.md
Source commit 281e39451fb4487b4828d62fcb51ca853589a185
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- Matches the observed repository HEAD
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- Scanner rules are current
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- Observed behavior
- Network or broad shell
- Last checked
- Nov 4, 2026
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- Repository last updated
- Nov 6, 2026
- License
- MIT
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- agent-skills Repository topic
- design Derived category
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## Required diagnosis output
For every diagnose or explain request, the final answer must explicitly cover
all of these points, even when the immediate cause is simply missing
`Inputs`/`Outputs`:
- the target and exact root-cause evidence;
- the actual input/output timestamp comparison;
- missing, deleted, cleaned, or rewritten outputs;
- complete inputs, including dynamic or volatile inputs;
- evaluated input/output paths and one-to-one mapping when item lists are batched;
- two identical no-change builds and the expected second-build skip/out-of-date evidence.
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