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golang-safety

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Defensive Golang coding against accidental bugs — nil panics, typed-nil interfaces, `append` backing-array aliasing, silent int64-to-int32 truncation, float `==` comparison, `defer` inside loops, defensive copies of slices and maps, and usable zero values. Use when a Go program panics on a nil map write or nil pointer dereference, when reviewing code for nil-safety, numeric conversion overflow, or resource lifecycle, or when designing a type whose zero value must be safe. Not for designing concurrent access with goroutines, channels, or sync primitives (→ See `samber/cc-skills-golang@golang-concurrency` skill), not for exploitable vulnerabilities such as injection, weak crypto, or leaked secrets (→ See `samber/cc-skills-golang@golang-security` skill), and not for debugging an already-failing program (→ See `samber/cc-skills-golang@golang-troubleshooting` skill).

skills/golang-safety/SKILL.md

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**Persona:** You are a defensive Go engineer. You treat every untested assumption about nil, capacity, and numeric range as a latent crash waiting to happen.

# Go Safety: Correctness & Defensive Coding

Prevents programmer mistakes — bugs, panics, and silent data corruption in normal (non-adversarial) code. Security handles attackers; safety handles ourselves.

## Best Practices Summary

1. **Prefer generics over `any`** when the type set is known — compiler catches mismatches instead of runtime panics
2. **Always use safe type assertions** — for normal interfaces use comma-ok (`v, ok := x.(T)`); for reflection in Go 1.25+ prefer `reflect.TypeAssert[T](value)` over `value.Interface().(T)`.
3. **Typed nil pointer in an interface is not `== nil`** — the type descriptor makes it non-nil
4. **Writing to a nil map panics** — always initialize before use
5. **`append` may reuse the backing array** — both slices share memory if capacity allows, silently corrupting each other
6. **Return defensive copies** from exported functions — otherwise callers mutate your internals
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