Swift Concurrency Expert

Swift Concurrency Expert

Attribution: Sourced from steipete/agent-scripts by Peter Steinberger. Originally created by @Dimillian from Dimillian/Skills (2025-12-31).

Overview

Review and fix Swift Concurrency issues in Swift 6.2+ codebases by applying actor isolation, Sendable safety, and modern concurrency patterns with minimal behavior changes.

When to Use

• Fixing Swift 6 strict concurrency compiler errors
• Reviewing Sendable conformance, actor isolation, and data race safety
• Migrating pre-Swift 6 async code to strict concurrency
• Choosing between actors, @MainActor, nonisolated, and @Sendable

Workflow

1. Triage the issue

• Capture the exact compiler diagnostics and the offending symbol(s).
• Identify the current actor context (@MainActor, actor, nonisolated) and whether a default actor isolation mode is enabled.
• Confirm whether the code is UI-bound or intended to run off the main actor.

2. Apply the smallest safe fix

Prefer edits that preserve existing behavior while satisfying data-race safety.

Common fixes:

• UI-bound types: annotate the type or relevant members with @MainActor.
• Protocol conformance on main actor types: make the conformance isolated (e.g., extension Foo: @MainActor SomeProtocol).
• Global/static state: protect with @MainActor or move into an actor.
• Background work: move expensive work into a @concurrent async function on a nonisolated type or use an actor to guard mutable state.
• Sendable errors: prefer immutable/value types; add Sendable conformance only when correct; avoid @unchecked Sendable unless you can prove thread safety.

Key Patterns

@MainActor annotation

// UI-bound type
@MainActor
class ViewModel: ObservableObject {
    @Published var items: [Item] = []
}

// Protocol conformance
extension MyView: @MainActor SomeProtocol { ... }

Actor for shared mutable state

actor DataCache {
    private var cache: [String: Data] = [:]
    
    func store(_ data: Data, for key: String) {
        cache[key] = data
    }
    
    func retrieve(for key: String) -> Data? {
        cache[key]
    }
}

Sendable conformance

// Immutable value type - safe
struct Config: Sendable {
    let apiKey: String
    let baseURL: URL
}

// Only use @unchecked when you can manually guarantee thread safety
final class ThreadSafeCache: @unchecked Sendable {
    private let lock = NSLock()
    private var cache: [String: Any] = [:]
}

Diagnostic Checklist

• Compiler diagnostic captured exactly
• Actor context identified (@MainActor, actor, nonisolated, implicit)
• Fix preserves existing behavior
• No @unchecked Sendable without proven thread safety
• No unnecessary await or Task { } wrappers added