What is Compiled Models in EF Core and how does it improve startup time?

Compiled Models pre-generate the heavy metadata model instantiation code, drastically reducing DbContext initialization time.

By default, the first time a DbContext is instantiated, EF Core runs OnModelCreating, reflects over entity types, and builds a massive metadata model. For large contexts with hundreds of entities, this causes a severe cold-start delay. Compiling the model via the CLI generates static C# files that skip this runtime discovery.