The easiest way I found is to octodns-dump the record set down, then update with excluded. Or just create excluded records that match pattern. Something like:

---
? ''
: - octodns:
      excluded:
      - provider
    ttl: 60
    type: A
    values:
    - 192.168.1.2
    - 192.168.50.50
  - type: MX
    values:
    - exchange: mx.example.com.
      preference: 10
www:
  octodns:
    excluded:
    - provider
  type: CNAME
  value: magic.dynamic.endpoint.com.

@brianeclow Thank you.
exclude multiple records using pattern matching interests me. However, it does not solve our use case.
Incrementally, I would like to run octodns-sync and sync only the records that were updated in YAML.
In other words, I would like to see an option in octodns that can sync at record level rather than complete zone level.

In other words, I would like to see an option in octodns that can sync at record level rather than complete zone level.

This isn't possible with octoDNS as it's designed to work without any extra metadata so it wouldn't be able to know which records it owns (and needs to manage including deletes) and which records it would need to leave alone.

The recommendation from @brianeclow is the best option I can think of us as well. If you dump the full zone and then go through and exclude the things you don't want it to touch seems like it'll get the desired behavior.