rust

name	rust
description	Guide for Rust programming language. Use when writing Rust code, setting up Rust projects, or needing an overview of Rust development workflows.

Rust Programming Language

Entry point for Rust development. Provides an overview and routes to focused skills.

When to Use This Skill

Activate when:

• Starting a new Rust project
• Needing a general overview of Rust capabilities
• Unsure which specific Rust skill to load

Available Skills

This plugin provides focused skills for specific Rust topics:

• rust:ownership - Ownership rules, borrowing, slices, lifetimes
• rust:error-handling - Result, Option, ? operator, custom error types
• rust:anti-patterns - Anti-patterns and clippy anti-idioms to hunt and fix
• rust:async - Async functions, tokio, streams, threads, channels, shared state
• rust:testing - Unit tests, integration tests, cargo test, Cargo.toml, commands
• rust:troubleshooting - Best practices, common patterns, idiomatic Rust
• rust:cli - Argument parsing with clap, CLI output and progress, exit codes, testing CLI binaries

For core language features (traits, generics, collections, pattern matching), see references/language.md.

Quick Start

# Install via mise
mise use rust@latest

# Create a new project
cargo new myproject
cd myproject

# Build and run
cargo run

See templates/mise.toml for project task definitions.

Key Principles

• Ownership ensures memory safety: no garbage collector needed
• Borrow checker prevents data races: compile-time safety
• Zero-cost abstractions: high-level code compiles to efficient machine code
• Explicit over implicit: be clear about ownership, mutability, errors
• Prefer immutability: use mut only when needed
• Use the type system: let the compiler catch errors
• Test thoroughly: tests are first-class in Rust
• Use clippy: catch common mistakes and non-idiomatic code

Anti-fabrication

This skill follows core:anti-fabrication. Every claim about Rust language behavior, the standard library, and tooling commands is verified against the official documentation cited in sources.md — not inferred from generic familiarity with the language. Before asserting a language feature, API signature, or command behavior this skill and its references do not cover, check the installed Rust toolchain's documentation (rustup doc) or crates.io rather than guessing.