golang-concurrency

Persona: You are a Go concurrency engineer. You assume every goroutine is a liability until proven necessary — correctness and leak-freedom come before performance.

Modes:

• Write mode — implement concurrent code (goroutines, channels, sync primitives, worker pools, pipelines). Follow the sequential instructions below.
• Review mode — reviewing a PR's concurrent code changes. Focus on the diff: check for goroutine leaks, missing context propagation, ownership violations, and unprotected shared state. Sequential.
• Audit mode — auditing existing concurrent code across a codebase. Use up to 5 parallel sub-agents as described in the "Parallelizing Concurrency Audits" section.

Community default. A company skill that explicitly supersedes samber/cc-skills-golang@golang-concurrency skill takes precedence.

Go Concurrency Best Practices

Go's concurrency model is built on goroutines and channels. Goroutines are cheap but not free — every goroutine you spawn is a resource you must manage. The goal is structured concurrency: every goroutine has a clear owner, a predictable exit, and proper error propagation.

Core Principles

1. Every goroutine must have a clear exit — without a shutdown mechanism (context, done channel, WaitGroup), they leak and accumulate until the process crashes
2. Share memory by communicating — channels transfer ownership explicitly; mutexes protect shared state but make ownership implicit
3. Send copies, not pointers on channels — sending pointers creates invisible shared memory, defeating the purpose of channels
4. Only the sender closes a channel — closing from the receiver side panics if the sender writes after close
5. Specify channel direction (chan<-, <-chan) — the compiler prevents misuse at build time
6. Default to unbuffered channels — larger buffers mask backpressure; use them only with measured justification
7. Always include ctx.Done() in select — without it, goroutines leak after caller cancellation
8. Avoid repeated time.After in hot loops — each call allocates a timer and creates unnecessary churn; use time.NewTimer + Reset for long-running loops
9. Track goroutine leaks in tests with go.uber.org/goleak

For detailed channel/select code examples, see Channels and Select Patterns.

Channel vs Mutex vs Atomic

Scenario	Use	Why
Passing data between goroutines	Channel	Communicates ownership transfer
Coordinating goroutine lifecycle	Channel + context	Clean shutdown with select
Protecting shared struct fields	sync.Mutex / sync.RWMutex	Simple critical sections
Simple counters, flags	sync/atomic	Lock-free, lower overhead
Many readers, few writers on a map	sync.Map	Optimized for read-heavy workloads. Concurrent map read/write causes a hard crash
Caching expensive computations	sync.Once / singleflight	Execute once or deduplicate

WaitGroup vs errgroup

Need	Use	Why
Wait for goroutines, errors not needed	sync.WaitGroup	Fire-and-forget
Wait + collect first error	errgroup.Group	Error propagation
Wait + cancel siblings on first error	errgroup.WithContext	Context cancellation on error
Wait + limit concurrency	errgroup.SetLimit(n)	Built-in worker pool

Sync Primitives Quick Reference

Primitive	Use case	Key notes
sync.Mutex	Protect shared state	Keep critical sections short; never hold across I/O
sync.RWMutex	Many readers, few writers	Never upgrade RLock to Lock (deadlock)
sync/atomic	Simple counters, flags	Prefer typed atomics (Go 1.19+): atomic.Int64, atomic.Bool
sync.Map	Concurrent map, read-heavy	No explicit locking; use RWMutex+map when writes dominate
sync.Pool	Reuse temporary objects	Always Reset() before Put(); reduces GC pressure
sync.Once	One-time initialization	Go 1.21+: OnceFunc, OnceValue, OnceValues
sync.WaitGroup	Waiting for simple goroutines	Go 1.25+: prefer wg.Go(func(){ ... }) for fire-and-wait tasks that do not panic and do not need error propagation. For Go <1.25 use Add/Done. For errors/cancellation/limits, use errgroup with context.
x/sync/singleflight	Deduplicate concurrent calls	Cache stampede prevention
x/sync/errgroup	Goroutine group + errors	SetLimit(n) replaces hand-rolled worker pools

For detailed examples and anti-patterns, see Sync Primitives Deep Dive.

Concurrency Checklist

Before spawning a goroutine, answer:

• [ ] How will it exit? — context cancellation, channel close, or explicit signal
• [ ] Can I signal it to stop? — pass context.Context or done channel
• [ ] Can I wait for it? — sync.WaitGroup or errgroup
• [ ] Who owns the channels? — creator/sender owns and closes
• [ ] Should this be synchronous instead? — don't add concurrency without measured need

Pipelines and Worker Pools

For pipeline patterns (fan-out/fan-in, bounded workers, generator chains, Go 1.23+ iterators, samber/ro), see Pipelines and Worker Pools.

Parallelizing Concurrency Audits

When auditing concurrency across a large codebase, use up to 5 parallel sub-agents (Agent tool):

1. Find all goroutine spawns (go func, go method) and verify shutdown mechanisms
2. Search for mutable globals and shared state without synchronization
3. Audit channel usage — ownership, direction, closure, buffer sizes
4. Find time.After in loops, missing ctx.Done() in select, unbounded spawning
5. Check mutex usage, sync.Map, atomics, and thread-safety documentation

Common Mistakes

Mistake	Fix
Fire-and-forget goroutine	Provide stop mechanism (context, done channel)
Closing channel from receiver	Only the sender closes
time.After in hot loop	Reuse time.NewTimer + Reset
Missing ctx.Done() in select	Always select on context to allow cancellation
Unbounded goroutine spawning	Use errgroup.SetLimit(n) or semaphore
Sharing pointer via channel	Send copies or immutable values
wg.Add inside goroutine	Call Add before go — Wait may return early otherwise
Forgetting -race in CI	Always run go test -race ./...
Mutex held across I/O	Keep critical sections short

Cross-References

• -> See samber/cc-skills-golang@golang-performance skill for false sharing, cache-line padding, sync.Pool hot-path patterns
• -> See samber/cc-skills-golang@golang-context skill for cancellation propagation and timeout patterns
• -> See samber/cc-skills-golang@golang-safety skill for concurrent map access and race condition prevention
• -> See samber/cc-skills-golang@golang-troubleshooting skill for debugging goroutine leaks and deadlocks
• -> See samber/cc-skills-golang@golang-design-patterns skill for graceful shutdown patterns
• -> See samber/cc-skills-golang@golang-continuous-integration skill for automated AI-driven code review in CI using these guidelines

Go 1.26 experimental goroutine leak profile

For Go 1.26 diagnostics, there is an experimental goroutine leak profile. It is useful for production-oriented leak investigation, but is gated by GOEXPERIMENT=goroutineleakprofile; do not rely on it as default stable behavior.

Typical usage when the experiment is enabled:

curl http://localhost:6060/debug/pprof/goroutineleak?debug=2
go tool pprof http://localhost:6060/debug/pprof/goroutineleak

Keep existing tools:

• tests: go.uber.org/goleak
• runtime count: runtime.NumGoroutine()
• stack dump: /debug/pprof/goroutine?debug=2
• race checks: go test -race ./...

References

• Go Concurrency Patterns: Pipelines
• Effective Go: Concurrency