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golang-concurrency

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Write safe concurrent Go code with goroutines, channels, and context. Use when implementing concurrency with goroutines, channels, or context in Go.

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Source SKILL.md: https://github.com/HoangNguyen0403/agent-skills-standard/blob/HEAD/skills/golang/golang-concurrency/SKILL.md

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Golang Concurrency

Priority: P0 (CRITICAL)

Principles

  • Share Memory by Communicating: Use channels instead of shared memory.
  • Context King: Always pass ctx to manage cancellation/timeouts.
  • Prevent Leaks: Never start goroutine without knowing how it will stop.
  • Race Detection: Always run tests with go test -race.

Implementation Workflow

  1. Choose primitive — Channels for data passing, sync.Mutex for simple state protection, errgroup for parallel tasks with error handling.
  2. Pass context — Every goroutine that I/O or long work must accept context.Context.
  3. Define exit paths — Every goroutine must clear shutdown mechanism (context cancellation, channel close, or WaitGroup).
  4. Use select for multiplexing — Handle multiple channels or timeouts with select.
  5. Test with race detector — Run go test -race in CI.

See ErrGroup and concurrency patterns and context timeout examples

Anti-Patterns

  • No goroutine leaks: ensure every goroutine known exit path.
  • No shared global state: use channels or sync primitives across goroutines.
  • No bare goroutines: use errgroup or WaitGroup for lifecycle management.

References