Go Development Skill

Production-grade Go development patterns for building resilient services, extracted from real-world projects including job schedulers, Docker integrations, and LDAP clients.

🔌 Compatibility

This is an Agent Skill following the open standard originally developed by Anthropic and released for cross-platform use.

Supported Platforms:

  • ✅ Claude Code (Anthropic)
  • ✅ Cursor
  • ✅ GitHub Copilot
  • ✅ Other skills-compatible AI agents

Skills are portable packages of procedural knowledge that work across any AI agent supporting the Agent Skills specification.

Features

  • Architecture Patterns: Package structure conventions, state mutation completeness
  • Cron Scheduling: go-cron patterns — named jobs, runtime updates, per-entry context, resilience wrappers, observability, FakeClock testing, bitmask parser options
  • Resilience Patterns: go-cron's built-in retry/circuit-breaker/timeout wrappers for scheduled jobs
  • Docker Integration: Optimized Docker client patterns, buffer pooling for performance, container execution patterns
  • LDAP Integration: Active Directory patterns, user and group management, authentication flows
  • Testing Strategy: Build tags for test isolation (unit/integration/e2e), race-condition and Fiber v2 test gotchas, resource isolation
  • Observability: Prometheus metrics integration, structured logging, error tracking

Installation

Marketplace (Recommended)

Add the Netresearch marketplace once, then browse and install skills:

# Claude Code
/plugin marketplace add netresearch/claude-code-marketplace

npx (skills.sh)

Install with any Agent Skills-compatible agent:

npx skills add https://github.com/netresearch/go-development-skill --skill go-development

Download Release

Download the latest release and extract to your agent's skills directory.

Git Clone

git clone https://github.com/netresearch/go-development-skill.git

Composer (PHP Projects)

composer require netresearch/go-development-skill

Requires netresearch/composer-agent-skill-plugin.

Usage

This skill is automatically triggered when:

  • Building Go services or CLI applications
  • Implementing job scheduling or task orchestration
  • Integrating with Docker API
  • Building LDAP/Active Directory clients
  • Designing resilient systems with retry logic
  • Setting up comprehensive test suites

Example queries:

  • "Create a resilient job scheduler in Go"
  • "Implement Docker container execution with retry logic"
  • "Build LDAP authentication client"
  • "Set up graceful shutdown for Go service"
  • "Implement buffer pooling for high-throughput operations"
  • "Create comprehensive test suite with build tags"

Structure

go-development-skill/
├── SKILL.md                              # Skill metadata and core patterns
└── references/
    ├── architecture.md                   # Package structure, state mutation completeness
    ├── cron-scheduling.md                # go-cron: named jobs, updates, context, resilience
    ├── resilience.md                     # Pointer to go-cron's resilience wrappers
    ├── docker.md                         # Docker client patterns
    ├── ldap.md                           # LDAP/Active Directory integration
    ├── testing.md                        # Build tags, race and Fiber v2 gotchas
    ├── linting.md                        # golangci-lint v2 configuration
    ├── api-design.md                     # Enum/status defensive handling
    ├── fuzz-testing.md                   # Go fuzzing patterns, security seeds
    ├── mutation-testing.md               # Gremlins test quality measurement
    ├── makefile.md                       # Standard Makefile interface
    └── modernization.md                  # Go 1.26 modernizers, go fix, errors.AsType

Expertise Areas

Architecture Patterns

  • Package structure conventions
  • State mutation completeness (avoiding partial updates)

Cron Scheduling (go-cron)

  • Named jobs with O(1) lookup
  • Runtime updates (UpsertJob, UpdateSchedule, UpdateEntry)
  • Per-entry context with automatic cancellation
  • Resilience wrappers (retry, circuit breaker, timeout)
  • Observability hooks (Prometheus integration)
  • FakeClock for deterministic testing
  • Missed job catch-up policies

Resilience Patterns

  • Retry, circuit-breaker, and timeout wrappers built into go-cron for scheduled jobs
  • Standard library-backed patterns (rate limiting, graceful shutdown) outside the job scheduler

Docker Integration

  • Optimized Docker client patterns
  • Buffer pooling for performance
  • Container execution patterns

LDAP Integration

  • Active Directory patterns
  • User and group management
  • Authentication flows

Testing Strategy

  • Build tags for test isolation (unit/integration/e2e)
  • Race-condition gotchas and fixes
  • Resource isolation (one instance per test)
  • Fiber v2 test patterns

Running Tests

# Unit tests only (default)
go test ./...

# With integration tests
go test -tags=integration ./...

# Full suite including E2E
go test -tags=e2e ./...

# With race detector
go test -race ./...

# With coverage
go test -coverprofile=coverage.out ./...
go tool cover -html=coverage.out

Quality Gates

Recommended Tooling

.PHONY: dev-check
dev-check: fmt vet lint security test

fmt:
	gofmt -w $(shell git ls-files '*.go')
	gci write .

vet:
	go vet ./...

lint:
	golangci-lint run --timeout 5m

security:
	gosec ./...
	gitleaks detect

test:
	go test -race ./...

Related Skills

This skill focuses on Go code patterns and quality. For complete project setup:

Skill Purpose
github-project Repository setup, branch protection, auto-merge workflows
enterprise-readiness OpenSSF Scorecard, SLSA provenance, signed releases
security-audit OWASP Top 10, CVE analysis, security hardening

License

This project uses split licensing:

  • Code (scripts, workflows, configs): MIT
  • Content (skill definitions, documentation, references): CC-BY-SA-4.0

See the individual license files for full terms.

Credits

Developed and maintained by Netresearch DTT GmbH.


Made with ❤️ for Open Source by Netresearch