microsoft / microsoft/win-dev-skills

[Skill] ETW / .etl trace analysis

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Dominant language
C#
Stars
442
Forks
33
Avg merge
2h 59m
Merged PRs (30d)
11

Description

Parent: #126

Summary

A guidance skill that teaches an agent how to capture and analyze ETW traces (.etl) for performance, hangs, and diagnostics on Windows. Focused on the headless workflow — an agent has no WPA GUI, so it must drive capture and extraction from the command line and reason over text/structured output.

What the skill should teach the agent

  • How to capture headlessly: WPR profiles (wpr -start / -stop), xperf, or netsh trace — and which to pick per scenario.
  • How to turn a .etl into agent-readable data without WPA: e.g. tracerpt (CSV/XML), wpaexporter, xperf -a, PerfView headless, or the TraceProcessing library — then what to look for in CPU sampling, disk/file/network I/O, wait analysis, and hangs.
  • Provider discovery (logman query providers) and custom EventSource events.
  • Scenario playbooks: slow startup, UI hangs, high CPU, leaks — what to capture and how to interpret the extracted data.

Deliverables

  • Skill (SKILL.md + supporting guidance files) under plugins/.
  • Example walkthrough (headless capture → extract → interpret a slow-startup trace).

Open questions

  • A live-ETW MCP server is a separate future item.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start with the requested skill under plugins/ and review the ETW tools named in the issue: WPR, xperf, netsh trace, tracerpt, wpaexporter, PerfView, and TraceProcessing. Build the SKILL.md and supporting guidance around headless capture, extraction, provider discovery, and the listed diagnostic scenarios. Done means the skill includes a slow-startup walkthrough from capture through interpretation.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Domain
observability, operating-systems, performance
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
55/100

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