golang-lint

The saved excerpt is a snapshot from when this skill was listed. The external source remains the complete and most current version.

---
name: golang-lint
description: "Linting best practices and golangci-lint configuration for Golang projects — running linters, configuring .golangci.yml, suppressing warnings with nolint directives, interpreting lint output, and selecting linters. Use when configuring golangci-lint, asking about lint warnings or nolint suppressions, setting up code quality tooling, or choosing linters. Also use when the user mentions golangci-lint, go vet, staticcheck, or revive. Not for wiring a lint step into a GitHub Actions pipeline (→ See `samber/cc-skills-golang@golang-continuous-integration` skill)."
user-invocable: true
license: MIT
compatibility: Designed for Claude Code, Codex or similar harness, and for projects using Golang.
metadata:
  author: samber
  version: "1.4.1"
  openclaw:
    emoji: "🧹"
    homepage: https://github.com/samber/cc-skills-golang
    requires:
      bins:
        - go
        - golangci-lint
    install:
      - kind: brew
        formula: golangci-lint
        bins: [golangci-lint]
allowed-tools: Read Edit Write Glob Grep Bash(go:*) Bash(golangci-lint:*) Bash(git:*) Agent
paths:
  - "**/*.go"
  - ".golangci.yml"
---

**Persona:** You are a Go code quality engineer. You treat linting as a first-class part of the development workflow — not a post-hoc cleanup step.

**Orchestration mode:** Fan out the five sub-agents described in the "Parallelizing Legacy Codebase Cleanup" section (auto-fix, security linters, error handling, style/formatting, code quality) when adopting linting on a legacy codebase, so independent linter categories are fixed concurrently. On Claude Code, use `ultracode` to opt into multi-agent orchestration explicitly.

**Modes:**

- **Setup mode** — configuring `.golangci.yml`, choosing linters, enabling CI: follow the configuration and workflow sections sequentially.
- **Coding mode** — writing new Go code: launch a background agent running `golangci-lint run --fix` on the modified files only while the main agent continues implementing the feature; surface results when it completes.
- **Interpret/fix mode** — reading lint output, suppressing warnings, fixing issues on existing code: start from "Interpreting Output" and "Suppressing Lint Warnings"; use parallel sub-agents for large-scale legacy cleanup.

**Dependencies:**

- golangci-lint: `go install github.com/golangci/golangci-lint/cmd/golangci-lint@latest`

# Go Linting

## Overview

`golangci-lint` is the standard Go linting tool. It aggregates 100+ linters into a single binary, runs them in parallel, and provides a unified configuration format. Run it frequently during development and always in CI.

Every Go project MUST have a `.golangci.yml` — it is the **source of truth** for which linters are enabled and how they are configured. See the [recommended configuration](./assets/.golangci.yml) for a production-ready setup with 48 linters enabled.

## Quick Reference

```bash
# Run all configured linters
golangci-lint run ./...

# Auto-fix issues where possible
golangci-lint run --fix ./...

# Format code (golangci-lint v2+)
golangci-lint fmt ./...

# Run a single linter only
golangci-lint run --enable-only govet ./...

# List all available linters
golangci-lint linters

# Verbose output with timing info
golangci-lint run --verbose ./...
```

## Configuration

The [recommended .golangci.yml](./assets/.golangci.yml) provides a production-ready setup with 33 linters. For configuration details, linter categories, and per-linter descriptions, see the **[linter reference](./references/linter-reference.md)** — which linters check for what (correctness, style, complexity, performance, security), descriptions of all 33+ linters, and when each one is useful.

## Suppressing Lint Warnings

Use `//nolint` directives sparingly — fix the root cause first.

```go
// Good: specific linter + justification
//nolint:errcheck // fire-and-forget logging, error is not actionable
_ = logger.Sync()

// Bad: blanket suppression without reason
//nolint
_ = logg