csharp-concurrency-patterns

SKILL.md

Navigate .NET concurrency from async/await through Channels to Akka.NET based on your specific problem.

Start with async/await for I/O-bound work; escalate only when you hit a concrete limitation that simpler tools can't address cleanly

Use Parallel.ForEachAsync for CPU-bound parallelism, Channel<T> for producer/consumer decoupling with backpressure, and Reactive Extensions for UI event composition

Akka.NET Actors handle stateful entity management, state machines with Become(), and distributed scenarios; Akka.NET Streams provide server-side batching and throttling

Avoid locks, manual thread creation, and blocking on async code; prefer immutability, message passing, and System.Collections.Concurrent when shared state is unavoidable

.NET Concurrency: Choosing the Right Tool

When to Use This Skill

Use this skill when:

Deciding how to handle concurrent operations in .NET

Evaluating whether to use async/await, Channels, Akka.NET, or other abstractions

Tempted to use locks, semaphores, or other synchronization primitives

Need to process streams of data with backpressure, batching, or debouncing

Managing state across multiple concurrent entities

Reference Files

advanced-concurrency.md: Akka.NET Streams, Reactive Extensions, Akka.NET Actors (entity-per-actor, state machines, cluster sharding), and async local function patterns

The Philosophy

Start simple, escalate only when needed.