Golang Patterns

This one's a solid reference for writing Go the way the language designers intended. It covers the fundamentals like making zero values useful, accepting interfaces but returning structs, and proper error wrapping with fmt.Errorf. The concurrency section is especially practical, showing worker pools, errgroup usage, and how to avoid goroutine leaks with buffered channels and context. What I like is it doesn't just tell you the rules, it shows bad examples alongside good ones so you can see why idiomatic Go matters. Activate this when you're writing new Go code or reviewing pull requests and want to keep things simple and maintainable instead of clever.

skills.sh installs: 6.3K
GitHub stars: 300.3K
last updated: Aug 21, 2026

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Install

$ npx -y skills add affaan-m/ecc --skill golang-patterns --agent claude-code

Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.

Files

Go Development Patterns

Idiomatic Go patterns and best practices for building robust, efficient, and maintainable applications.

When to Activate

Writing new Go code
Reviewing Go code
Refactoring existing Go code
Designing Go packages/modules

Core Principles

1. Simplicity and Clarity

Go favors simplicity over cleverness. Code should be obvious and easy to read.

// Good: Clear and direct
func GetUser(id string) (*User, error) {
    user, err := db.FindUser(id)
    if err != nil {
        return nil, fmt.Errorf("get user %s: %w", id, err)
    }
    return user, nil
}

// Bad: Overly clever
func GetUser(id string) (*User, error) {
    return func() (*User, error) {
        if u, e := db.FindUser(id); e == nil {
            return u, nil
        } else {
            return nil, e
        }
    }()
}

2. Make the Zero Value Useful

Design types so their zero value is immediately usable without initialization.

// Good: Zero value is useful
type Counter struct {
    mu    sync.Mutex
    count int // zero value is 0, ready to use
}

func (c *Counter) Inc() {
    c.mu.Lock()
    c.count++
    c.mu.Unlock()
}

SKILL.md on GitHub