reliability

name	reliability
description	Assess and improve runtime reliability by hardening error handling, resource lifecycle management, cancellation/timeout behavior, and recovery characteristics. Use when building or reviewing code that touches I/O, concurrency, retries, long-running jobs, cleanup paths, or failure handling.

Reliability Workflow

Inputs

• scope: files, module, package, service, or subsystem.
• mode (optional): review-only or fix (default).
• risk_level (optional): high, medium, low.

References

Use selective loading:

• Always start with references/philosophy/overview.md.
• Load only active-language checklists:
• references/checklists/go.md
• references/checklists/javascript-typescript.md
• references/checklists/python.md
• references/checklists/rust.md
• In polyglot changes, load only the checklists for touched languages.

Procedure

1. Identify reliability-sensitive paths in scope.
2. Audit failure handling, cleanup, cancellation/timeouts, and retry strategy.
3. Identify reliability risks and rank by severity.
4. In fix mode, apply minimal safe changes to eliminate high/medium risks.
5. Validate with targeted tests and failure-path checks.
6. Summarize resolved and residual risks.

Reliability Focus Areas

• Resource acquisition/release symmetry.
• Explicit error propagation and context.
• Bounded waits, retries, and backoff.
• Cancellation propagation and graceful shutdown.
• Idempotency/recovery for retries/restarts.

Output Contract

1. Reliability findings (severity + file evidence).
2. Fix summary (when mode=fix).
3. Validation evidence and remaining risks.