winui-dev-workflow

A build-and-run guide for WinUI 3 projects using WinApp CLI, a command-line tool for creating, building, and launching Windows apps.

In plain words
What is it for?
Scaffolding a new WinUI project, inspecting its project file, adding packages, building and launching it, and diagnosing errors with the supplied PowerShell wrapper.
Why use it?
It gives developers a consistent workflow for starting projects, running existing ones, using analyzers, and investigating crashes or build problems.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/microsoft/win-dev-skills/winui-dev-workflow
Any agent
npx skills add microsoft/win-dev-skills --skill winui-dev-workflow
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/microsoft/win-dev-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 73 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,654 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00073 $0.01654
Opus 5 $0.00036 $0.00827
Sonnet 5 $0.00015 $0.00331
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00165

Measured 2d ago against content hash 1539fce9d371, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

winui-dev-workflow scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 1 executable file (BuildAndRun.ps1), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

plugins/winui/agent-plugin/skills/winui-dev-workflow/SKILL.md · 112 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 112 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Create or Open a Project

New app — let WinApp CLI install/update the official templates and scaffold:

winapp new --name <AppName> --template winui-mvvm --template-version latest --use-defaults
cd <AppName>

Run winapp new --list to discover the currently installed template short names. Do not install the template pack separately and do not create the output directory first.

Existing app — read the .csproj to understand:

  • <TargetFramework> (e.g., net10.0-windows10.0.26100.0)
  • <PackageReference> versions (WindowsAppSDK, CommunityToolkit)
  • Project structure and established patterns

Install Packages

dotnet add package <Name>

Never specify --version — omitting it gets the latest stable and avoids outdated API mismatches.

Build & Run

WinApp CLI 0.6+ builds a .csproj and launches it directly:

winapp run . --debug-output
winapp run .\MyApp.csproj -c Release --arch arm64

For normal development, prefer the included BuildAndRun.ps1 wrapper. It invokes project-mode winapp run, injects the bundled Microsoft.WindowsAppSDK.Analyzers, and turns on --debug-output by default:

.\BuildAndRun.ps1

Invoke attached runs with mode: "async". The command stays attached while the app is open, so a synchronous call blocks for the app's lifetime. The output contains the running app's PID.

The wrapper only adds repository-specific analyzer and debug defaults. WinApp CLI handles:

  1. Project restore and build
  2. Configuration, architecture, runtime, and framework selection
  3. Packaged versus unpackaged detection
  4. Build-output and executable discovery
  5. Windows App Runtime setup
  6. Package registration and launch

Options and forwarded WinApp arguments:

.\BuildAndRun.ps1                              # one top-level csproj; attached diagnostics
.\BuildAndRun.ps1 .\MyApp.csproj               # explicit project
.\BuildAndRun.ps1 .\MyApp.csproj -c Release    # forwarded to winapp run
.\BuildAndRun.ps1 .\MyApp.csproj --arch arm64  # forwarded to winapp run
.\BuildAndRun.ps1 . --detach --json             # return after launch; emit PID as JSON
.\BuildAndRun.ps1 . --symbols                   # add Symbol Server-backed native symbols
.\BuildAndRun.ps1 --args "--flag value"         # pass application arguments

Read the full file on GitHub · 112 lines

Files

What ships with it

3 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 2d ago First seen · 112 lines · 73 tokens per session scan A 1539fce9d371

Subscribe to this mod's changes

winui-dev-workflow is a skill published in the GitHub repository microsoft/win-dev-skills (406 stars, last pushed 6d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 73 tokens to every session and 1,654 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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