Effect Usage

This Skill Is Guidance

This skill helps agents make better-informed decisions about Effect usage. It is not a governance framework or rigid decision engine. Agents should use it to navigate trade-offs and find relevant patterns — not to replace architectural reasoning. Context, project requirements, and user intent take precedence over any guidance here.

Core Doctrine

Effect is a structured description of a workflow — lazy, immutable, and composable [O]. It models interactions rather than performing them; execution is deferred to a runtime. This makes Effect programs testable, interruptible, and resource-safe by construction.

Use Effect where it creates structural leverage: orchestration, error channels, resource lifecycle, retries, concurrency. Do not use Effect where it only adds ceremony: pure logic, simple transforms, trivial I/O wrappers.