golang-lint

Original：🇺🇸 English

Translated

Provides linting best practices and golangci-lint configuration for Go projects. Covers running linters, configuring .golangci.yml, suppressing warnings with nolint directives, interpreting lint output, and managing linter settings. Use this skill whenever the user runs linters, configures golangci-lint, asks about lint warnings or suppressions, sets up code quality tooling, or asks which linters to enable for a Go project. Also use when the user mentions golangci-lint, go vet, staticcheck, revive, or any Go linting tool.

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Sourcesamber/cc-skills-golang

Added on2026-03-24

NPX Install

npx skill4agent add samber/cc-skills-golang golang-lint

SKILL.md Content

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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.

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.

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 for a production-ready setup with 33 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 provides a production-ready setup with 33 linters. For configuration details, linter categories, and per-linter descriptions, see the linter reference — 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
_ = logger.Sync()

Rules:

//nolint directives MUST specify the linter name:
```
//nolint:errcheck
```
not
```
//nolint
```
//nolint directives MUST include a justification comment:
```
//nolint:errcheck // reason
```
The
nolintlint
linter enforces both rules above — it flags bare
```
//nolint
```
and missing reasons
NEVER suppress security linters (bodyclose, sqlclosecheck) without a very strong reason

For comprehensive patterns and examples, see nolint directives — when to suppress, how to write justifications, patterns for per-line vs per-function suppression, and anti-patterns.

Development Workflow

Linters SHOULD be run after every significant change:
```
golangci-lint run ./...
```
Auto-fix what you can:
```
golangci-lint run --fix ./...
```
Format before committing:
```
golangci-lint fmt ./...
```
Incremental adoption on legacy code: set
```
issues.new-from-rev
```
in
```
.golangci.yml
```
to only lint new/changed code, then gradually clean up old code

Makefile targets (recommended):

makefile

lint:
	golangci-lint run ./...

lint-fix:
	golangci-lint run --fix ./...

fmt:
	golangci-lint fmt ./...

For CI pipeline setup (GitHub Actions with

golangci-lint-action

), see the

samber/cc-skills-golang@golang-continuous-integration

skill.

Interpreting Output

Each issue follows this format:

path/to/file.go:42:10: message describing the issue (linter-name)

The linter name in parentheses tells you which linter flagged it. Use this to:

Look up the linter in the reference to understand what it checks
Suppress with
```
//nolint:linter-name // reason
```
if it's a false positive
Use
```
golangci-lint run --verbose
```
for additional context and timing

Common Issues

Problem	Solution
"deadline exceeded"	Increase `run.timeout` in `.golangci.yml` (default: 5m)
Too many issues on legacy code	Set `issues.new-from-rev: HEAD~1` to lint only new code
Linter not found	Check `golangci-lint linters` — linter may need a newer version
Conflicts between linters	Disable the less useful one with a comment explaining why
v1 config errors after upgrade	Run `golangci-lint migrate` to convert config format
Slow on large repos	Reduce `run.concurrency` or exclude directories in `run.skip-dirs`

Parallelizing Legacy Codebase Cleanup

When adopting linting on a legacy codebase, use up to 5 parallel sub-agents (via the Agent tool) to fix independent linter categories simultaneously:

Sub-agent 1: Run
```
golangci-lint run --fix ./...
```
for auto-fixable issues
Sub-agent 2: Fix security linter findings (bodyclose, sqlclosecheck, gosec)
Sub-agent 3: Fix error handling issues (errcheck, nilerr, wrapcheck)
Sub-agent 4: Fix style and formatting (gofumpt, goimports, revive)
Sub-agent 5: Fix code quality (gocritic, unused, ineffassign)

Cross-References

→ See
```
samber/cc-skills-golang@golang-continuous-integration
```
skill for CI pipeline with golangci-lint-action
→ See
```
samber/cc-skills-golang@golang-code-style
```
skill for style rules that linters enforce
→ See
```
samber/cc-skills-golang@golang-security
```
skill for SAST tools beyond linting (gosec, govulncheck)