golang-design-patterns
Persona: You are a Go architect who values simplicity and explicitness. You apply patterns only when they solve a real problem — not to demonstrate sophistication — and you push back on premature abstraction.
Modes:
- Design mode — creating new APIs, packages, or application structure: ask the developer about their architecture preference before proposing patterns; favor the smallest pattern that satisfies the requirement.
- Review mode — auditing existing code for design issues: scan for
init()abuse, unbounded resources, missing timeouts, and implicit global state; report findings before suggesting refactors.
Community default. A company skill that explicitly supersedes
samber/cc-skills-golang@golang-design-patternsskill takes precedence.
Go Design Patterns & Idioms
Idiomatic Go patterns for production-ready code. For error handling details see the samber/cc-skills-golang@golang-error-handling skill; for context propagation see samber/cc-skills-golang@golang-context skill; for struct/interface design see samber/cc-skills-golang@golang-structs-interfaces skill.
Best Practices Summary
- Constructors SHOULD use functional options — they scale better as APIs evolve (one function per option, no breaking changes)
- Functional options MUST return an error if validation can fail — catch bad config at construction, not at runtime
- Avoid
init()— runs implicitly, cannot return errors, makes testing unpredictable. Use explicit constructors - Enums SHOULD start at 1 (or Unknown sentinel at 0) — Go's zero value silently passes as the first enum member
More from samber/cc-skills-golang
golang-code-style
Golang code style, formatting and conventions. Use when writing Go code, reviewing style, configuring linters, writing comments, or establishing project standards.
2.7Kgolang-performance
Golang performance optimization patterns and methodology - if X bottleneck, then apply Y. Covers allocation reduction, CPU efficiency, memory layout, GC tuning, pooling, caching, and hot-path optimization. Use when profiling or benchmarks have identified a bottleneck and you need the right optimization pattern to fix it. Also use when performing performance code review to suggest improvements or benchmarks that could help identify quick performance gains. Not for measurement methodology (see golang-benchmark skill) or debugging workflow (see golang-troubleshooting skill).
2.7Kgolang-error-handling
Idiomatic Golang error handling — creation, wrapping with %w, errors.Is/As, errors.Join, custom error types, sentinel errors, panic/recover, the single handling rule, structured logging with slog, HTTP request logging middleware, and samber/oops for production errors. Built to make logs usable at scale with log aggregation 3rd-party tools. Apply when creating, wrapping, inspecting, or logging errors in Go code.
2.7Kgolang-testing
Provides a comprehensive guide for writing production-ready Golang tests. Covers table-driven tests, test suites with testify, mocks, unit tests, integration tests, benchmarks, code coverage, parallel tests, fuzzing, fixtures, goroutine leak detection with goleak, snapshot testing, memory leaks, CI with GitHub Actions, and idiomatic naming conventions. Use this whenever writing tests, asking about testing patterns or setting up CI for Go projects. Essential for ANY test-related conversation in Go.
2.5Kgolang-concurrency
Golang concurrency patterns. Use when writing or reviewing concurrent Go code involving goroutines, channels, select, locks, sync primitives, errgroup, singleflight, worker pools, or fan-out/fan-in pipelines. Also triggers when you detect goroutine leaks, race conditions, channel ownership issues, or need to choose between channels and mutexes.
2.5Kgolang-security
Security best practices and vulnerability prevention for Golang. Covers injection (SQL, command, XSS), cryptography, filesystem safety, network security, cookies, secrets management, memory safety, and logging. Apply when writing, reviewing, or auditing Go code for security, or when working on any risky code involving crypto, I/O, secrets management, user input handling, or authentication. Includes configuration of security tools.
2.5K