Add dynamo-build-tests and dynamo-run-tests agent skills

[jasonstratton]

Purpose

Adds two new agent skills to fill the operational gap in build and test tooling guidance. No existing skill covered the concrete commands, flag sequences, and failure patterns needed to build and run tests in this repo.

dynamo-build-tests (.agents/skills/dynamo-build-tests/SKILL.md)

• Resolves tool paths from the reference_build_tools.md memory file before searching
• Preferred approach: dotnet build --no-dependencies (avoids MSB4803 satellite assembly errors from DynamoUnits/DesignScriptBuiltin)
• Falls back to MSBuild with correctly quoted args (prevents bash from interpreting /p: as a path)
• Documents known pre-existing errors to filter out (MSB4803, MSB3030)
• Lists all common test projects and their coverage areas

dynamo-run-tests (.agents/skills/dynamo-run-tests/SKILL.md)

• Always uses --no-restore --no-build to avoid triggering satellite assembly errors
• Documents --filter syntax, verbosity levels, and how to interpret results
• Troubleshooting table covering "discovered 0 of 0", stale DLLs, and filter mismatches
• Links back to dynamo-build-tests for the rebuild step

Both skills cross-reference each other and dynamo-unit-testing. Index entries added to AGENTS.md and .agents/README.md (Quick Reference table, parity matrix, and folder structure).

These skills do not overlap with existing ones — dynamo-onboarding, dynamo-dotnet-expert, dynamo-unit-testing, and dynamo-dotnet-janitor all reference building/testing only in passing with no operational detail.

Declarations

Check these if you believe they are true

• Is documented according to the standards
• The level of testing this PR includes is appropriate
• Changes to the API follow Semantic Versioning and are documented in the API Changes document.

Release Notes

N/A — agent skill additions, no product code changes.

Reviewers

(FILL ME IN)

FYIs

(FILL ME IN, Optional)

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Adds two new Dynamo agent skills focused on practical build/test execution guidance, and indexes them in the agent documentation.

Changes:

• Added new skill docs: dynamo-build-tests and dynamo-run-tests with workflows, commands, and troubleshooting guidance.
• Updated AGENTS.md to list the two new skills.
• Updated .agents/README.md parity matrix, quick reference, and folder structure to include the new skills.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 4 out of 4 changed files in this pull request and generated 5 comments.

File	Description
AGENTS.md	Adds entries for the new build/tests skills in the skills index.
.agents/skills/dynamo-build-tests/SKILL.md	New skill documenting how to build test projects (dotnet build + MSBuild fallback).
.agents/skills/dynamo-run-tests/SKILL.md	New skill documenting how to run NUnit tests via dotnet test with filters and troubleshooting.
.agents/README.md	Registers the new skills in the parity matrix, quick reference, and folder structure sections.

[jasonstratton]

Addressed all Copilot review comments:

• Hardcoded tool paths (comments 1 & 2): Removed all hardcoded paths. <MSBuildPath> and <DotNetPath> are now placeholders resolved at runtime from the Claude Code memory file or via vswhere/where dotnet. The reference_build_tools.md memory file is called out as Claude Code-specific and not part of the repo.
• MSBuild vs dotnet: Restructured dynamo-build-tests to prefer MSBuild (the repo standard); dotnet build --no-dependencies is now the documented fallback, with a clear two-step recovery when dependency DLLs are missing.
• VisualizationTests → WpfVisualizationTests (comments 3 & 5): Fixed in both skills. Replaced the static project tables entirely with a find test -name "*.csproj" | sort discovery command, with a note about the directory/assembly name mismatch for visualization tests.
• OR filter escaped pipe (comment 4): Moved the OR filter example out of the markdown table into a fenced code block with a literal |.

Additional improvements made during review:

• dynamo-run-tests workflow restructured into 5 explicit steps: resolve path → find project → ensure DLL current → run tests → interpret results.
• Duplicate step numbering fixed.

[sonarqubecloud]

Quality Gate passed

Issues
0 New issues
0 Accepted issues

Measures
0 Security Hotspots
0.0% Coverage on New Code
0.0% Duplication on New Code

See analysis details on SonarQube Cloud

[aparajit-pratap]

@jasonstratton from what I read about using skills in ClaudeCode, I believe they are portable to CC only if the skills are in .claude/skills. Therefore, IMO, we should create this directory and mirror the .agents/skills in it - add lightweight wrappers that point to the main skill content from .claude/skills -> .agents/skills.

[aparajit-pratap]

Loaded directly ... is repeated twice?

[aparajit-pratap]

@jasonstratton from what I read about using skills in ClaudeCode, I believe they are portable to CC only if the skills are in .claude/skills. Therefore, IMO, we should create this directory and mirror the .agents/skills in it - add lightweight wrappers that point to the main skill content from .claude/skills -> .agents/skills.

This is what I'm talking about. This list doesn't appear using slash commands directly unless you do the above. Not that you have to do this (at least not as part of this PR; definitely not); I just wanted to confirm with you as this was one of my sources of confusion regarding skills.

[avidit]

@aparajit-pratap We have another repo https://github.com/DynamoDS/skills which is structured as a claude plugin, that is makes install and update very and also makes it easy to launch the skills as slash commands. Can you try it out and let me know if it works https://dynamods.github.io/skills/

If that makes things easier, we can add these skills to the shared skills repo. FYI @jasonstratton

[aparajit-pratap]

@aparajit-pratap We have another repo https://github.com/DynamoDS/skills which is structured as a claude plugin, that is makes install and update very and also makes it easy to launch the skills as slash commands. Can you try it out and let me know if it works https://dynamods.github.io/skills/

If that makes things easier, we can add these skills to the shared skills repo. FYI @jasonstratton

@avidit, thanks. I will check https://github.com/DynamoDS/skills out the next time I send a PR. However, I believe these skills here are specific to the Dynamo repo, not the whole DynamoDS org, unlike the skills repo, so IMO it make sense to keep them here.

[jasonstratton]

@aparajit-pratap , very sorry for any confusion. I was just adding to what I thought @QilongTang had established ... and I was able to use them in Claude.

Thank you @avidit for your help and clarifications.

I will dig into it a little deeper and speak with Aaron for best course. I figured the PR may/may not get approved, but I was throwing out the skills as suggestions. I did find it helpful when working with Claude. I could tell it to go ahead and build/run the tests while I went ahead and tested manually. So we were working in parallel and it was a pretty good workflow.