C++ Systems & Libraries

Covers C++17 as the baseline, with C++20 features called out where a project's standard allows them. For plain C (manual lifetimes, status enums, native extensions), see the ia-c-systems skill.

Working rules

• Make resource ownership explicit and use RAII for release on every exit path.
• Keep borrowed views within backing-storage lifetimes and review copy/move behavior when special members change.
• Follow the project's error model and supported language standard.
• Preserve ABI and avoid invoking unknown callbacks while holding locks or invalidatable container iterators.

Repo conventions outrank this skill

Check CMakeLists.txt for CXX_STANDARD, read .clang-format and .clang-tidy, and read two adjacent translation units before writing. Where they conflict with the rules below, they win.

The conflicts that actually happen: