Move the template to .NET 11 once it reaches general availability #599

🤖 Generated by the Agentic Engineer

Evidence

• The template's toolchain policy (AGENTS.md, Toolchain-floor policy) says to track the latest released (GA) .NET. It moves the target framework and the global.json SDK floor together, only when a new GA ships, and never to a preview or release candidate.
• Today the template targets net10.0 with an SDK floor of 10.0.300.
• Microsoft's public release index, read on 3 November 2026, lists .NET 11.0 as go-live (latest 11.0.0-rc.3, 25 October 2026). No GA build exists yet. .NET 10 is the current LTS (end of support 14 November 2028).

Who it affects and why

People who start a new .NET library from this template. Once .NET 11 is GA, a new project should start on the current release rather than one release behind. That is what the template's own policy promises.

Hypothesis

If the template moves to .NET 11 within a week of GA, a project created from it builds and tests on the newest GA toolchain on all three CI platforms, with no extra setup by the person starting it.

Success signal

• The three required .NET template tests checks pass on the bumped template.
• dotnet build and dotnet test work on a fresh copy made from the template.
• No net10.0 copy is left in either project file or in the docs.
• Window: within 7 days of the .NET 11 GA release appearing in Microsoft's release index.

Smallest useful change

In one PR:

• set <TargetFramework>net11.0</TargetFramework> in src/Example/Example.csproj and tests/Example.Tests/Example.Tests.csproj;
• raise the global.json SDK floor to the first .NET 11 GA SDK feature band;
• update the net10.0 mentions in AGENTS.md and README;
• check that the test packages (xUnit v3 on Microsoft.Testing.Platform, coverlet, code coverage) support net11.0;
• record the GA release as the trigger in the PR body.

Acceptance criteria

• The .NET 11 GA release is published in Microsoft's release index. Until then, this issue is time-gated and not started.
• Both project files and global.json move together, with no straggler.
• Required CI passes on Ubuntu, Windows and macOS.
• The docs name the new framework.

Open question for the PR

.NET 11 is a standard-term release (about 18 months of support), and .NET 10 is long-term. The current policy says "latest GA" with no LTS exception, so this issue follows the policy. If an LTS-only floor turns out to be better for people using the template, the PR should change the policy text explicitly rather than quietly skip the bump.

Rough size

Small: two project files, global.json and two docs, plus CI.

The upstream packaging and shared SDK blockers are resolved. Draft #627 now adopts the released .NET 11 test action and dotnet-releaser 0.25.0 at signed d6c97b9a92826544d25de3a71f27358c54dfaab3. Hosted scaffold/package validation, all three required platform tests, a current-head review and user-path acceptance remain outstanding; this issue stays open. See the release applicability and validation record.