Individual skill
microbenchmarking
Activate this skill when BenchmarkDotNet (BDN) is involved in the task — creating, running, configuring, or reviewing BDN benchmarks. Also activate when microbenchmarking .NET code would be useful and BenchmarkDotNet is the likely tool. Consider activating when answering a .NET performance question requires measurement and BenchmarkDotNet may be needed. Covers microbenchmark design, BDN configuration and project setup, how to run BDN microbenchmarks efficiently and effectively, and using BDN for side-by-side performance comparisons. Do NOT use for profiling/tracing .NET code (dotnet-trace, PerfView), production telemetry, or load/stress testing (Crank, k6).
plugins/dotnet-diag/skills/microbenchmarking/SKILL.md
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- Last checked
- Nov 4, 2026
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SKILL.mdcore · 13,264 bytesSKILL.mdcore · 13,264 bytesreferences/bdn-internals-and-tuning.mddoc · 9,639 bytesreferences/comparison-strategies.mddoc · 8,702 bytesreferences/diagnosers-and-exporters.mddoc · 6,548 bytesreferences/project-setup-and-running.mddoc · 9,441 bytesreferences/writing-benchmarks.mddoc · 12,292 bytes
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# Benchmark Authoring Guidelines
BenchmarkDotNet (BDN) is a .NET library for writing and running microbenchmarks. Throughout this skill, "BDN" refers to BenchmarkDotNet.
> **Note:** Evaluations of LLMs writing BenchmarkDotNet benchmarks have revealed common failure patterns caused by outdated assumptions about BDN's behavior — particularly around runtime comparison, job configuration, and execution defaults that have changed in recent versions. The reference files in this skill contain verified, current information. **You MUST read the reference files relevant to the task before writing any code** — your training data likely contains outdated or incorrect BDN patterns.
## Key concepts
- **Job** — describes how to run a benchmark: runtime, iteration counts, launch count, run strategy, and environment settings. Multiple jobs can be configured to run the same benchmarks under different conditions.
- **Benchmark case** — one method × one parameter combination × one job. The atomic unit BDN measures.
- **Operation** — the logical unit of work being measured. All BDN output columns (Mean, Error, etc.) report time per operation.
- **Invocation** — a single call to the benchmark method. By default, 1 invocation = 1 operation. With `OperationsPerInvoke=N`, each invocation counts as N operations.
- **Iteration** — a timed batch of invocations. BDN measures the total time for all invocations in an iteration, then divides by the total operation count to get per-operation time.
