dotnet-channels

Deep guide to System.Threading.Channels for high-performance, thread-safe producer/consumer communication in .NET. Covers channel creation, backpressure strategies, IAsyncEnumerable integration, and graceful shutdown patterns.

Out of scope: Hosted service lifecycle and BackgroundService registration are owned by [skill:dotnet-background-services]. Async/await fundamentals and cancellation token propagation are owned by [skill:dotnet-csharp-async-patterns].

Cross-references: [skill:dotnet-background-services] for integrating channels with hosted services, [skill:dotnet-csharp-async-patterns] for async patterns used in channel consumers.

Channel Fundamentals

A Channel<T> is a thread-safe data structure with separate ChannelWriter<T> and ChannelReader<T> endpoints. Writers produce items, readers consume them -- the channel handles all synchronization.