microsoft / microsoft/win-dev-skills
[Skill] ETW / .etl trace analysis
Nobody has claimed this yet.
- 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, ornetsh trace— and which to pick per scenario. - How to turn a
.etlinto 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 customEventSourceevents. - 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
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- 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