How to use the Go Expert Guidance agent skill (golang-expert)

What the skill makes the agent do

Once installed, the skill shapes how the agent writes Go. It leans toward simple, explicit code, handles errors at each call site, and ensures goroutines have a clear shutdown path. It also asks the agent to pass context.Context through I/O and long-running functions, and to suggest table-driven tests and patterns such as worker pools and functional options.

• Accept interfaces, return structs.
• Handle every error explicitly at the call site.
• Give every goroutine a clear shutdown path.
• Use context.Context as the first parameter of I/O functions.
• Wrap errors with %w and check them with errors.Is() and errors.As().

Install the golang-expert skill

Download the skill ZIP from this page. The skill is a single file, SKILL.md. You can install it in one of two ways.

For Claude Code, unzip the download into ~/.claude/skills/ to make it available in all your projects, or into a project's .claude/skills/ folder to limit it to that project.

In the Claude apps, upload the ZIP under Settings → Capabilities → Skills.

Trigger the skill with natural requests

You do not need a special command. Ask for Go work in normal language and the agent will apply the guidance when the request matches the skill's description, which covers goroutines, channels, interfaces, modules and concurrency patterns.

Name Go and the task clearly. The more specific the request, the more useful the guidance.

• Write a Go worker pool that reads jobs from a channel and stops cleanly on context cancellation.
• Review this Go HTTP handler for error handling and goroutine leaks.
• Refactor this Go package so the functions accept an interface instead of a concrete type.
• Write table-driven tests for this Go parsing function.

Check what the skill can and cannot do

The skill is guidance only. It does not run anything on your machine. It requires nothing else to be listed, runs no scripts and uses no network access. The advice is general, so the agent may still produce code that does not match the APIs or versions of your libraries.

Treat its output like code from a capable colleague: compile it, run your tests and review it before it reaches production.

• Requires: nothing listed.
• Runs scripts: no.
• Uses network: no.
• Files: SKILL.md.

Tips for getting better Go output

Give the agent your context. Tell it the Go version, the libraries you use and whether the code is a service or a command-line tool. The skill notes that the Go 1.22 loop variable change exists, so stating your version helps the agent judge what is needed.

If you want consistent style in code review, ask the agent to review against the skill's practices, such as explicit error handling and goroutine shutdown paths.

• Name the Go version and key libraries in your request.
• Ask for table-driven tests alongside new functions.
• Ask the agent to explain any concurrency choice, such as why it used a mutex instead of a channel.