Skillintermediate

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.

Claude Code Knowledge Pack7/10/2026

Overview

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)