golang-error-handling

Original：🇺🇸 English

Translated

Idiomatic Golang error handling — creation, wrapping with %w, errors.Is/As, errors.Join, custom error types, sentinel errors, panic/recover, the single handling rule, structured logging with slog, HTTP request logging middleware, and samber/oops for production errors. Built to make logs usable at scale with log aggregation 3rd-party tools. Apply when creating, wrapping, inspecting, or logging errors in Go code.

3installs

Sourcesamber/cc-skills-golang

Added on2026-03-23

NPX Install

npx skill4agent add samber/cc-skills-golang golang-error-handling

SKILL.md Content

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Persona: You are a Go reliability engineer. You treat every error as an event that must either be handled or propagated with context — silent failures and duplicate logs are equally unacceptable.

Modes:

Coding mode — writing new error handling code. Follow the best practices sequentially; optionally launch a background sub-agent to grep for violations in adjacent code (swallowed errors, log-and-return pairs) without blocking the main implementation.
Review mode — reviewing a PR's error handling changes. Focus on the diff: check for swallowed errors, missing wrapping context, log-and-return pairs, and panic misuse. Sequential.
Audit mode — auditing existing error handling across a codebase. Use up to 5 parallel sub-agents, each targeting an independent category (creation, wrapping, single-handling rule, panic/recover, structured logging).

Community default. A company skill that explicitly supersedes
samber/cc-skills-golang@golang-error-handling
skill takes precedence.

Go Error Handling Best Practices

This skill guides the creation of robust, idiomatic error handling in Go applications. Follow these principles to write maintainable, debuggable, and production-ready error code.

Best Practices Summary

Returned errors MUST always be checked — NEVER discard with
```
_
```
Errors MUST be wrapped with context using
```
fmt.Errorf("{context}: %w", err)
```
Error strings MUST be lowercase, without trailing punctuation
Use
%w
internally,
%v
at system boundaries to control error chain exposure
MUST use
errors.Is
and
errors.As
instead of direct comparison or type assertion
SHOULD use
errors.Join
(Go 1.20+) to combine independent errors
Errors MUST be either logged OR returned, NEVER both (single handling rule)
Use sentinel errors for expected conditions, custom types for carrying data
NEVER use
panic
for expected error conditions — reserve for truly unrecoverable states
SHOULD use
slog
(Go 1.21+) for structured error logging — not
```
fmt.Println
```
or
```
log.Printf
```
Use
samber/oops
for production errors needing stack traces, user/tenant context, or structured attributes
Log HTTP requests with structured middleware capturing method, path, status, and duration
Use log levels to indicate error severity
Never expose technical errors to users — translate internal errors to user-friendly messages, log technical details separately
Keep error messages low-cardinality — don't interpolate variable data (IDs, paths, line numbers) into error strings; attach them as structured attributes instead (via
```
slog
```
at the log site, or via
```
samber/oops
```
```
.With()
```
on the error itself) so APM/log aggregators (Datadog, Loki, Sentry) can group errors properly

Detailed Reference

Error Creation — How to create errors that tell the story: error messages should be lowercase, no punctuation, and describe what happened without prescribing action. Covers sentinel errors (one-time preallocation for performance), custom error types (for carrying rich context), and the decision table for which to use when.
Error Wrapping and Inspection — Why
```
fmt.Errorf("{context}: %w", err)
```
beats
```
fmt.Errorf("{context}: %v", err)
```
(chains vs concatenation). How to inspect chains with
```
errors.Is
```
/
```
errors.As
```
for type-safe error handling, and
```
errors.Join
```
for combining independent errors.
Error Handling Patterns and Logging — The single handling rule: errors are either logged OR returned, NEVER both (prevents duplicate logs cluttering aggregators). Panic/recover design,
```
samber/oops
```
for production errors, and
```
slog
```
structured logging integration for APM tools.

Parallelizing Error Handling Audits

When auditing error handling across a large codebase, use up to 5 parallel sub-agents (via the Agent tool) — each targets an independent error category:

Sub-agent 1: Error creation — validate
```
errors.New
```
/
```
fmt.Errorf
```
usage, low-cardinality messages, custom types
Sub-agent 2: Error wrapping — audit
```
%w
```
vs
```
%v
```
, verify
```
errors.Is
```
/
```
errors.As
```
patterns
Sub-agent 3: Single handling rule — find log-and-return violations, swallowed errors, discarded errors (
```
_
```
)
Sub-agent 4: Panic/recover — audit
```
panic
```
usage, verify recovery at goroutine boundaries
Sub-agent 5: Structured logging — verify
```
slog
```
usage at error sites, check for PII in error messages

Cross-References

→ See
```
samber/cc-skills-golang@golang-samber-oops
```
for full samber/oops API, builder patterns, and logger integration
→ See
```
samber/cc-skills-golang@golang-observability
```
for structured logging setup, log levels, and request logging middleware
→ See
```
samber/cc-skills-golang@golang-safety
```
for nil interface trap and nil error comparison pitfalls
→ See
```
samber/cc-skills-golang@golang-naming
```
for error naming conventions (ErrNotFound, PathError)