null-as-error-cc

A scanner and review workflow for finding Effect code that turns real errors into ordinary values such as null, an empty list, or false. Effect is a TypeScript library for describing programs and handling their errors.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to audit Effect code for silent error handling, scan a chosen source directory, and produce a classified report.
Why use it?
It helps reveal cases where callers cannot tell a genuine failure from a normal empty result. It first checks that the project uses Effect, then classifies findings.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/bengous/claude-code-plugins/null-as-error-cc
Any agent
npx skills add bengous/claude-code-plugins --skill null-as-error-cc
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/bengous/claude-code-plugins

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 74 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 684 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00074 $0.00684
Opus 5 $0.00037 $0.00342
Sonnet 5 $0.00015 $0.00137
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00068

Measured 2d ago against content hash 788d74cf56c7, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

null-as-error-cc scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 2 executable files (scripts/probe-effect.sh, scripts/scan.ts), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

archive/effect-tooling/skills/null-as-error-cc/SKILL.md · 101 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 101 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

null-as-error

Detect silent error swallowing in Effect codebases. The antipattern: catchAll(() => Effect.succeed(null)) collapses real errors (disk full, permissions) into sentinel values (null, [], false) that callers cannot distinguish from normal absence.

Project context

  • effect_posture: !~/.claude/skills/null-as-error-cc/scripts/probe-effect.sh

Workflow

Phase 1 -- Gate on Effect

If the probe above shows effect="false", stop immediately:

This project does not use Effect. The null-as-error scanner targets Effect-specific patterns (catchAll, Effect.succeed, Effect.ignore). Nothing to scan.

Phase 2 -- Run scanner

Execute the scanner script. The user may provide a scope (directory path) as an argument; default to src/.

bun ~/.claude/skills/null-as-error-cc/scripts/scan.ts [scope] --json

Capture the JSON output. If meta.hitsFound is 0:

No silent error swallowing patterns found in [scope]. Clean.

Stop here.

Phase 3 -- Semantic analysis

The scanner found hits. Spawn the auditor subagent to classify each one:

Agent({
  subagent_type: "null-as-error-auditor",
  prompt: <see below>
})

The auditor task prompt must include:

  • The full scanner JSON output
  • Reference file paths for the auditor to read:
    • ~/.claude/skills/null-as-error-cc/references/patterns.md
    • ~/.claude/skills/null-as-error-cc/references/fixes.md
    • ~/.claude/skills/null-as-error-cc/references/guardrails.md

Phase 4 -- Report

Synthesize the auditor's findings into a final report:

## Silent Error Swallowing Audit

### Summary
- Scanned: N files in [scope]
- Found: N occurrences
- Breakdown: X errors, Y warnings, Z info, W suppressed

### Findings

#### [ERROR] ...
#### [WARNING] ...
#### [INFO] ...
#### [SUPPRESSED] ...

### Summary Table
| Function | File | Severity | Sentinel | Fix | Blast Radius |
|----------|------|----------|----------|-----|--------------|

Reference navigation

Question Load
Detection patterns and severity rules references/patterns.md
Fix strategies and decision tree references/fixes.md
False-positive prevention references/guardrails.md
Auditor agent definition ~/.claude/agents/null-as-error-auditor.md

Read the full file on GitHub · 101 lines

Files

What ships with it

5 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 2d ago First seen · 101 lines · 74 tokens per session scan A 788d74cf56c7

Subscribe to this mod's changes

null-as-error-cc is a skill published in the GitHub repository bengous/claude-code-plugins (4 stars, last pushed 3d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 74 tokens to every session and 684 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.