Go Style Core

This is your baseline for Go formatting and readability. It covers gofmt defaults, reducing nesting through early returns, when naked returns are acceptable (short functions only), and why opening braces stay on the same line due to semicolon insertion. The priority order matters here: clarity beats simplicity beats concision, which is a useful tiebreaker when you're staring at two valid approaches. It explicitly punts on naming, error handling, and testing to other skills, so think of this as the fallback when you have a style question that doesn't fit elsewhere. The examples are practical, especially the nested loop refactoring that shows how continue keeps code flat.

skills.sh installs: 1.3K
GitHub stars: 193
last updated: Aug 21, 2026

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Install

$ npx -y skills add cxuu/golang-skills --skill go-style-core --agent claude-code

Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.

Files

Go Style Core Principles

Resource Routing

references/PRINCIPLES.md - Read when resolving conflicts between clarity, simplicity, concision, maintainability, and consistency.
references/FORMATTING.md - Read when handling gofmt, line breaks, whitespace, comments, or semicolons.

Style Principles (Priority Order)

When writing readable Go code, apply these principles in order of importance:

Priority Order

Clarity — Can a reader understand the code without extra context?
Simplicity — Is this the simplest way to accomplish the goal?
Concision — Does every line earn its place?
Maintainability — Will this be easy to modify later?
Consistency — Does it match surrounding code and project conventions?

Formatting

Run gofmt — no exceptions. There is no rigid line length limit, but Uber suggests a soft limit of 99 characters. Break by semantics, not length — refactor rather than just wrap.