zig-tiger-style

name

zig-tiger-style

description

TigerStyle Zig coding guidelines — distilled from TigerBeetle's production codebase. Use this skill whenever the user is writing, reviewing, or refactoring Zig code, asking about Zig idioms, best practices, assertions, memory layout, naming conventions, or code style. Also trigger when the user asks how to structure Zig structs, handle errors, write safe loops, or design Zig APIs. Even if the user just says "write me some Zig" or pastes Zig code for review, consult this skill first.

TigerStyle: Zig Coding Guidelines

Distilled from TigerBeetle's TIGER_STYLE.md. Design goal priority: Safety > Performance > Developer Experience.

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1. Safety

Control Flow

• Use only simple, explicit control flow. No recursion unless provably bounded.

• Split compound conditions into nested if/else branches — ensure both the positive and negative spaces are handled or asserted.

• State invariants positively:

  // preferred
  if (index < length) { ... } else { ... }
  
  // avoid
  if (index >= length) { ... }
  

• Every if branch should prompt the question: does a corresponding else also need to be handled?

Assertions

Assertions detect programmer errors — not expected runtime errors. The only correct response to corrupt state is to crash. Assertions downgrade catastrophic correctness bugs into liveness bugs.

• A function must not operate blindly on data it has not checked; assert arguments at the entry point.

• Pair assertions: for any property you want to enforce, add assertions on at least two different code paths (e.g. just before writing to disk, and immediately after reading back).