go-connection-lifecycle-audit

name: go-connection-lifecycle-audit description: "Use when Go work involves long-lived inbound or outbound network connections, reconnect/retry/backoff behavior, keepalives, deadlines, silent-stall or zero-data modes, EOF/read-loop recovery, connection shutdown, source liveness, or operator-visible connection diagnostics. Compose with go-leak-detection when goroutines, sockets, timers, channels, queues, cancellation, or resource cleanup are touched."

Go Connection Lifecycle Audit

Overview

Use this skill to audit connection state machines in the Go cluster before planning, changing, or reviewing reconnect and liveness behavior. It focuses on whether a connection path keeps the data stream alive, recovers safely, shuts down cleanly, and tells operators what happened.

Workflow

1. Classify the connection role.

   • Inbound telnet client, outbound ingest source, peer connection, HTTP client/server, local replay/tool connection, or test-only transport.
   • Identify whether the path is process-lifetime, feature-lifetime, session-lifetime, request-lifetime, or one-shot.

2. Map ownership and state transitions.

   • Name the goroutine or component that owns dialing/listening, login, reading, writing, keepalive, retry, shutdown, and cleanup.
   • Identify the states that matter: disabled, starting, connecting, connected, authenticating, streaming, idle, failed, backing off, stopping, and stopped.
   • Compare sibling source types when relevant. A path that behaves differently from RBN, PSKReporter, telnet, or peer sources needs an explicit reason.

3. Audit failure and recovery modes.

   • Initial connect failure
   • Mid-stream EOF, timeout, reset, or parse/read error
   • Login/auth/banner failure
   • Upstream idle or silent-zero-data mode
   • Keepalive failure
   • Config-disabled or permanently invalid configuration
   • Shutdown while dialing, reading, writing, or backing off

4. Check retry and backoff bounds.

   • Reconnect loops must be bounded by context/shutdown and should cap retry frequency so a down upstream cannot create a connection storm.
   • Backoff reset, max interval, jitter, and log cadence should be explicit when they affect operators or overload behavior.
   • Keepalives on an existing socket are not a substitute for reconnect after a lost or never-established connection.

5. Check liveness and operator detectability.

   • Define what proves the source is healthy: connected socket, recent lines, accepted spots, heartbeat, explicit idle state, or feature-specific signal.
   • Operators should be able to distinguish disabled, waiting to reconnect, connected-but-idle, connected-and-streaming, and permanently failed states.
   • Logs/metrics should show connection attempt, failure reason, backoff, recovery, shutdown, and suppressed-noise decisions without flooding.

6. Check resource and lifecycle safety.

   • Verify sockets, response bodies, timers/tickers, channels, queues, and goroutines are closed or stopped on every failure and shutdown path.
   • Use go-leak-detection when cleanup, cancellation, timers, sockets, channels, queues, or goroutine ownership are materially touched.
   • Use go-blast-radius-audit when shared source interfaces, config, diagnostics, or support docs can be affected.

7. Define validation before code.

   • Prefer targeted lifecycle tests for initial dial failure, mid-stream drop, repeated reconnect churn, shutdown during backoff, keepalive failure, and sibling-source parity.
   • Use go test -race ./... when implementation touches goroutines, channels, timers, cancellation, lifecycle, shutdown, or long-lived connections.
   • Use runtime captures only when the claim requires long-running evidence; otherwise say the result is locally validated, not runtime-confirmed.

Output Expectations

• Include a Connection lifecycle audit section when this skill triggers.
• State the owner, state machine, failure modes, retry/backoff contract, operator-visible diagnostics, tests, and remaining evidence gaps.
• Do not claim reconnect behavior is fixed unless initial failure, mid-stream drop, and shutdown/retry interactions were actually tested or explicitly scoped out.
• Do not treat an existing keepalive as proof that lost connections recover.