EF Core Is Already a Repository. Stop Wrapping It in Another One.

Open a lot of .NET projects and you'll find the repository pattern sitting on top of Entity Framework Core. IProductRepository, GetById, Add, Save, the whole set. Underneath, every method just calls the EF Core DbContext and passes the result straight back. The wrapper adds a name and nothing else.

So do you need the repository pattern with EF Core? For most apps, no. EF Core already gives you one. DbSet is a repository. It already does the thing the pattern is for.

The reason this keeps happening is that the repository pattern got taught alongside EF, so people assume you need one to use the other. You don't.

What the Pattern Was For

The repository pattern came before EF Core. It started in a time when data access meant hand-written SQL, SqlCommand, and mapping DataReader rows to objects by hand. Wrapping all of that behind an interface was worth it. It hid a real mess, and it let you swap what was underneath without the rest of the app noticing.