Memory Safety Patterns

This one bridges the gap between C's manual memory management and Rust's compile-time guarantees by showing you the actual patterns that prevent use-after-free bugs, double-frees, and memory leaks across all three languages. It covers RAII destructors in C++, Rust's ownership system with borrowing rules, smart pointers like unique_ptr and shared_ptr, and even defensive patterns for C like goto cleanup. What I like is that it doesn't just show syntax but explains the tradeoffs between safety and control, plus it includes concrete examples of breaking reference cycles and handling interior mutability. Great for systems programmers who need to write bulletproof resource management code.

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last updated: Aug 21, 2026

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Install

$ npx -y skills add wshobson/agents --skill memory-safety-patterns --agent claude-code

Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.

Files

Memory Safety Patterns

Cross-language patterns for memory-safe programming including RAII, ownership, smart pointers, and resource management.

When to Use This Skill

Writing memory-safe systems code
Managing resources (files, sockets, memory)
Preventing use-after-free and leaks
Implementing RAII patterns
Choosing between languages for safety
Debugging memory issues

Core Concepts

1. Memory Bug Categories

Bug Type	Description	Prevention
Use-after-free	Access freed memory	Ownership, RAII
Double-free	Free same memory twice	Smart pointers
Memory leak	Never free memory	RAII, GC
Buffer overflow	Write past buffer end	Bounds checking
Dangling pointer	Pointer to freed memory	Lifetime tracking
Data race	Concurrent unsynchronized access	Ownership, Sync