Elixir Style and Conventions

When to Activate

Activate when:

• Writing or reviewing Elixir code for idiomatic style
• Deciding between bang (!) and non-bang function variants
• Handling errors from external APIs, user input, or DB operations
• Designing Ecto schemas and changesets for validation
• Building Phoenix forms connected to changeset validation
• Chaining multi-step operations with with or case
• Choosing between map.key and map[:key] access patterns
• Implementing non-DB data structures (search forms, filter params)

This skill complements elixir:anti-patterns — that skill covers what to avoid; this one covers what to do instead.

Tagged Tuples and Return Conventions

Elixir functions signal success or failure through return values, not exceptions.