dotnet-io-pipelines

High-performance I/O patterns using System.IO.Pipelines. Covers PipeReader, PipeWriter, backpressure management, protocol parser implementation, and Kestrel integration. Pipelines solve the classic problems of buffer management, incomplete reads, and memory copying that plague traditional stream-based network code.

Out of scope: Async/await fundamentals and ValueTask patterns -- see [skill:dotnet-csharp-async-patterns]. Benchmarking methodology and Span<T> micro-optimization -- see [skill:dotnet-performance-patterns]. File-based I/O (FileStream, RandomAccess, MemoryMappedFile) -- see [skill:dotnet-file-io].

Cross-references: [skill:dotnet-csharp-async-patterns] for async patterns used in pipeline loops, [skill:dotnet-performance-patterns] for Span/Memory optimization techniques, [skill:dotnet-file-io] for file-based I/O patterns (FileStream, RandomAccess, MemoryMappedFile).

Why Pipelines Over Streams

Traditional Stream-based I/O forces developers to manage buffers manually, handle partial reads, and copy data between buffers. System.IO.Pipelines solves these problems: