Python Services

Python Services & CLI

Modern Tooling

• uv init --package myproject for distributable packages, uv init for apps
• uv add <pkg>, uv add --group dev <pkg>, never edit pyproject.toml deps manually
• uv run <cmd> instead of activating venvs -- auto-activates the venv without explicit activation
• uv add --upgrade <pkg> to upgrade a single package without touching others
• uv tree --outdated to preview what would be upgraded before committing
• uv.lock goes in version control
• Use [dependency-groups] (PEP 735) for dev/test/docs, not [project.optional-dependencies]
• PEP 723 inline metadata for standalone scripts with deps
• ruff check --fix . && ruff format . for lint+format in one pass

Standard project layout:

src/mypackage/
    __init__.py
    main.py
    services/
    models/
tests/
    conftest.py
    test_main.py
pyproject.toml

See cli-tools.md for Click patterns, argparse, and CLI project layout.

Parallelism

Sync vs Async Decision

Use async (asyncio) when:

• I/O-bound work has multiple concurrent operations (HTTP calls, database queries, file I/O happening in parallel)
• WebSocket servers or long-lived connections require it
• The framework requires it (FastAPI async endpoints, aiohttp)

Stay synchronous when:

• Work is CPU-bound (computation, data transformation) -- async adds nothing, use multiprocessing instead
• Building simple scripts and CLI tools with sequential I/O
• All I/O is sequential anyway (one DB query, process result, one API call)
• The team lacks async debugging experience (asyncio stack traces are harder to read)

Rule of thumb: if the code is not waiting on multiple I/O operations concurrently, sync is simpler and correct. Do not add async complexity for a single sequential pipeline.

Key rule: Stay fully sync or fully async within a call path.

asyncio patterns:

• asyncio.gather(*tasks) for concurrent I/O -- use return_exceptions=True for partial failure tolerance
• asyncio.TaskGroup (3.11+) for structured concurrency -- automatic cancellation of sibling tasks on failure; prefer over gather when all tasks must succeed
• asyncio.Semaphore(n) to limit concurrency (rate limiting external APIs)
• asyncio.wait_for(coro, timeout=N) for timeouts
• asyncio.Queue for producer-consumer
• asyncio.Lock when coroutines share mutable state
• Never block the event loop: asyncio.to_thread(sync_fn) for sync libs, aiohttp/httpx.AsyncClient for HTTP
• Handle CancelledError -- always re-raise after cleanup
• Async generators (async for) for streaming/pagination

multiprocessing for CPU-bound:

from concurrent.futures import ProcessPoolExecutor
with ProcessPoolExecutor(max_workers=4) as pool:
    results = list(pool.map(cpu_task, items))

See fastapi.md for project structure, lifespan, config, DI, async DB, and repository pattern.

Background Jobs

• Return job ID immediately, process async. Client polls /jobs/{id} for status
• Celery: @app.task(bind=True, max_retries=3, autoretry_for=(ConnectionError,)) -- exponential backoff: raise self.retry(countdown=2**self.request.retries * 60)
• Alternatives: Dramatiq (modern Celery), RQ (simple Redis), cloud-native (SQS+Lambda, Cloud Tasks)
• Idempotency is mandatory -- tasks may retry. Use idempotency keys for external calls, check-before-write, upsert patterns
• Dead letter queue for permanently failed tasks after max retries
• Task workflows: chain(a.s(), b.s()) for sequential, group(...) for parallel, chord(group, callback) for fan-out/fan-in

Resilience

Retries with tenacity:

from tenacity import retry, stop_after_attempt, wait_exponential_jitter, retry_if_exception_type

@retry(
    retry=retry_if_exception_type((ConnectionError, TimeoutError)),
    stop=stop_after_attempt(5) | stop_after_delay(60),
    wait=wait_exponential_jitter(initial=1, max=30),
    before_sleep=log_retry_attempt,
)
def call_api(url: str) -> dict: ...

• Retry only transient errors: network, 429/502/503/504. Never retry 4xx (except 429), auth errors, validation errors
• Every network call needs a timeout
• @fail_safe(default=[]) decorator for non-critical paths -- return cached/default on failure
• functools.lru_cache(maxsize=N) for pure-function memoization; functools.cache (unbounded) for small domains
• Stack decorators: @traced @with_timeout(30) @retry(...) -- separate infra from business logic

Connection pooling is mandatory for production: reuse httpx.AsyncClient() across requests, configure SQLAlchemy pool_size/max_overflow, use aiohttp.TCPConnector(limit=N).

Production Resilience

• Fail-fast config validation: use a Pydantic BaseSettings model with model_validator to parse and validate all environment variables at startup. If invalid, crash before serving traffic. Never discover a missing secret on the first request that needs it.
• Health endpoints: expose /health (shallow liveness -- returns 200 if the process responds) and /ready (deep readiness -- verifies database, Redis, and critical dependencies are reachable). Load balancers route traffic based on /ready; orchestrators restart based on /health.

Observability

• structlog for JSON structured logging. Configure once at startup with JSONRenderer, TimeStamper, merge_contextvars
• Correlation IDs -- generate at ingress (X-Correlation-ID header), bind to contextvars, propagate to downstream calls
• Log levels: DEBUG=diagnostics, INFO=operations, WARNING=anomalies handled, ERROR=failures needing attention. Never log expected behavior at ERROR
• Prometheus metrics -- track latency (Histogram), traffic (Counter), errors (Counter), saturation (Gauge). Keep label cardinality bounded (no user IDs)
• OpenTelemetry for distributed tracing across services

Discipline

• Simplicity first -- every change as simple as possible, impact minimal code
• Only touch what's necessary -- avoid introducing unrelated changes
• No hacky workarounds -- if a fix feels wrong, step back and implement the clean solution
• Before adding a new abstraction, verify it appears in 3+ places. If not, inline it.
• Verify: see Verify section below -- pass all checks with zero warnings before declaring done
• Coverage target: 80%+ (uv run pytest --cov --cov-report=html)

Testing Patterns

• pytest flags: --lf (last failed), -x (stop on first failure), -k "pattern" (filter), --pdb (debugger on failure)
• Fixtures: use conftest.py for shared fixtures. Scope wisely: @pytest.fixture(scope="session") for expensive setup (DB connections), scope="function" (default) for test isolation
• tmp_path: built-in fixture for temp files -- no manual cleanup needed
• Parametrize with IDs: @pytest.mark.parametrize("input,expected", [...], ids=["empty", "single", "overflow"]) for readable test names
• Mock discipline: always autospec=True on mocks to catch API drift. assert_awaited_once() for async mocks.
• Test markers: register in pyproject.toml under [tool.pytest.ini_options] with markers = ["slow", "integration"]. Run fast tests with -m "not slow".
• Protocol duck typing: use class Renderable(Protocol) for structural typing at service boundaries -- enables testing with plain objects instead of mocks
• Context managers: @contextmanager for connection/transaction lifecycle. Always implement __exit__ cleanup.

Error Handling

• Validate inputs at boundaries before expensive ops. Report all errors at once when possible
• Use specific exceptions: ValueError, TypeError, KeyError, not bare Exception
• raise ServiceError("upload failed") from e -- always chain to preserve debug trail
• Convert external data to domain types (enums, Pydantic models) at system boundaries
• Batch processing: BatchResult(succeeded={}, failed={}) -- don't let one item abort the batch
• Pydantic BaseModel with field_validator for complex input validation

Migrations

• Separate schema and data migrations -- data backfills in their own migration file
• Renames/removals use expand-contract: add new column → backfill → switch reads → drop old (see ia-postgresql skill for the full pattern)
• Never edit a migration that has already run in a shared environment
• Alembic: use --autogenerate as a starting point, always review generated SQL before committing
• Test migrations against production-sized data -- a migration that takes 2ms on dev can lock a table for minutes in production

API Design

• Contract-first: define Pydantic BaseModel request/response schemas and FastAPI response_model before writing endpoint logic. The schema is the contract -- implementation follows. Generate OpenAPI docs from these models automatically.
• Hyrum's Law awareness: every observable response field, ordering, or timing becomes a dependency for callers. Use explicit response_model and model_config = ConfigDict(extra="forbid") to control exactly what's serialized -- never return raw dicts or ORM objects from endpoints.
• Addition over modification: add new optional fields (field: str | None = None) rather than changing or removing existing ones. Removing a Pydantic field from a response model breaks callers silently. Deprecate first (Field(deprecated=True)), remove in a later version.
• Consistent error structure: all exceptions should produce the same envelope: {"error": {"code": "...", "message": "...", "details": ...}}. Register @app.exception_handler for RequestValidationError, HTTPException, and application-specific exceptions to normalize into one format. Callers build error handling once.
• Boundary validation via Pydantic: validate at the endpoint/handler level with Pydantic models and FastAPI's automatic request parsing. Internal services and repositories trust that input was validated at entry -- no redundant validation scattered through business logic.
• Third-party responses are untrusted data: validate shape and content of external API responses before using them in logic, rendering, or decision-making. A compromised or misbehaving service can return unexpected types, malicious content, or missing fields. Parse through a Pydantic model before use.

Verify

• uv run pytest passes with zero failures
• uv run ruff check . passes with zero warnings
• uv run ty check . passes with zero errors
• Coverage target: 80%+ (uv run pytest --cov)