go-defensive

go-defensive is a skill for Claude Code from cxuu/golang-skills. It costs 76 tokens per session (1,596 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

Rules for making Go code safer at the boundaries where it receives or returns data, resources, and interfaces. They cover copying mutable values, cleanup, time types, globals, panics, and cryptographic safety.

In plain words
What is it for?
Reviewing or hardening Go APIs, including slice and map handling, deferred cleanup, interface checks, time values, enum values, globals, and panic behavior.
Why use it?
They reduce bugs caused by shared mutable data, forgotten cleanup, unsafe error handling, and incorrect time or security choices.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the golang-skills plugin — 20 skills shipped together

Good fit Reviewing or hardening Go APIs, including slice and map handling, deferred cleanup, interface checks, time values, enum values, globals, and panic behavior.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/cxuu/golang-skills/go-defensive
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.

Any agent
npx skills add cxuu/golang-skills --skill go-defensive
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/cxuu/golang-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install golang-skills, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 20 skills.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for go-defensive

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/cxuu/golang-skills/go-defensive/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/cxuu/golang-skills/go-defensive)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/cxuu/golang-skills/go-defensive"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/cxuu/golang-skills/go-defensive/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for go-defensive

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/cxuu/golang-skills/go-defensive"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/cxuu/golang-skills/go-defensive.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 76 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,596 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. Third-party audits
  • Socket pass 18 Mar 2026
  • Snyk pass 16 Mar 2026
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
How audits are shown
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 5.1 $0.00076 $0.01596
Opus 5 $0.00038 $0.00798
Sonnet 5 $0.00015 $0.00319
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00160

Measured 12d ago against content hash ae5a2a22f763, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

go-defensive 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 12d ago.

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.

skills/go-defensive/SKILL.md · 193 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 193 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Go Defensive Programming Patterns

Compatibility: Crypto examples may use crypto/rand.Text, which requires Go 1.24+.

Resource Routing

  • references/BOUNDARY-COPYING.md - Read when copying slices/maps across API boundaries.
  • references/GLOBAL-STATE.md - Read when introducing or removing package globals.
  • references/MUST-FUNCTIONS.md - Read when deciding whether a panic-on-error helper is acceptable.
  • references/PANIC-RECOVER.md - Read when evaluating panic, recover, or crash containment.
  • references/TIME-ENUMS-TAGS.md - Read when handling time types, enum zero values, or struct tags.

Defensive Checklist Priority

When hardening code at API boundaries, check in this order:

Reviewing an API boundary?
├─ 1. Error handling     → Return errors; don't panic (see go-error-handling)
├─ 2. Input validation   → Copy slices/maps received from callers
├─ 3. Output safety      → Copy slices/maps before returning to callers
├─ 4. Resource cleanup   → Use defer for Close/Unlock/Cancel
├─ 5. Interface checks   → Route compile-time assertions to go-interfaces
├─ 6. Time correctness   → Use time.Time and time.Duration, not int/float
├─ 7. Enum safety        → Start iota at 1 so zero-value is invalid
└─ 8. Crypto safety      → crypto/rand for keys, never math/rand

Quick Reference

Pattern Rule Details
Boundary copies Copy slices/maps on receive and return BOUNDARY-COPYING.md
Defer cleanup defer f.Close() right after os.Open Below
Interface check Compile-time satisfaction assertion See go-interfaces
Time types time.Time / time.Duration, never raw int TIME-ENUMS-TAGS.md
Enum start iota + 1 so zero = invalid Below
Crypto rand crypto/rand for keys, never math/rand Below
Must functions Only at init; panic on failure MUST-FUNCTIONS.md
Panic/recover Never expose panics across packages PANIC-RECOVER.md
Mutable globals Replace with dependency injection Below

Read the full file on GitHub · 193 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. 12d ago First seen · 193 lines · 76 tokens per session scan A ae5a2a22f763

Subscribe to this mod's changes

go-defensive is a skill published in the GitHub repository cxuu/golang-skills (159 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 76 tokens to every session and 1,596 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 2026-08-30.