go-logginglisted

# Go Logging Logs are written for **operators** — the human who will be paged at 3 a.m. and needs to know what happened. Every log line either helps diagnose a production issue or it is noise. `log/slog` from the standard library is the default; reach for anything else only after measuring. > This skill covers **logging only**. Metrics, distributed tracing, profiling, and RUM are a separate concern — they belong to a future `go-observability` skill. Do not confuse them with logging here. ## Core Rules 1. **Use `log/slog`** for new code. Structured, leveled, in the standard library since Go 1.21. 2. **Static message, structured fields.** The message describes what happened; data goes in key-value attributes. 3. **Log or return, never both.** Logging a wrapped error makes the same failure appear at every layer. 4. **Log at the boundary.** HTTP handlers, job runners, and `main` log. Library code wraps and returns. 5. **Use snake_case keys** consistently across the codebase (`user_id`, `request_id`, `elapsed_ms`). 6. **`slog.Error` always carries an `"err"` attribute.** Without it, you logged a sentence, not an error. 7. **Never log secrets, PII, or unbounded data.** Tokens, full credit cards, request bodies — none of it. ## Choosing a Logger | Situation | Use | |---|---| | New production service | `log/slog` | | Trivial CLI / one-off script | `log` (the standard package) | | Measured hot-path bottleneck where slog dominates the flame graph | `zap` or `zerolog`, but keep th