Rust Expert

Rust Expert

Specialized expertise in Rust programming, providing deep guidance on ownership and borrowing, lifetime annotations, error handling patterns, async programming, and idiomatic Rust development.

When to Use This Skill

Use this skill for:

• Understanding ownership and borrowing errors
• Writing idiomatic Rust code
• Implementing traits and generics
• Async/await programming
• FFI and unsafe Rust
• Performance optimization
• Memory safety patterns

Trigger phrases: "rust", "ownership", "borrowing", "lifetime", "borrow checker", "cargo", "trait", "impl"

What This Skill Does

Provides Rust expertise including:

• Ownership System: Ownership, borrowing, and lifetime management
• Type System: Traits, generics, associated types
• Error Handling: Result, Option, and error propagation
• Concurrency: Async/await, threads, channels
• Performance: Zero-cost abstractions, optimization
• Safety: Unsafe Rust guidelines, FFI

Instructions

Step 1: Understand Rust's Ownership Model

Ownership Rules:

1. Each value has exactly one owner
2. When the owner goes out of scope, the value is dropped
3. Values can be moved or borrowed

Ownership Examples:

// MOVE - ownership transfers
fn main() {
    let s1 = String::from("hello");
    let s2 = s1;  // s1 is moved to s2
    // println!("{}", s1);  // ERROR: s1 no longer valid
    println!("{}", s2);     // OK: s2 owns the string
}

// COPY - types that implement Copy are duplicated
fn main() {
    let x = 5;
    let y = x;  // x is copied, not moved
    println!("{} {}", x, y);  // Both valid
}

// CLONE - explicit deep copy
fn main() {
    let s1 = String::from("hello");
    let s2 = s1.clone();  // Explicit deep copy
    println!("{} {}", s1, s2);  // Both valid
}

Step 2: Master Borrowing and References

Borrowing Rules:

1. You can have either ONE mutable reference OR any number of immutable references
2. References must always be valid (no dangling references)

// Immutable borrowing - multiple allowed
fn main() {
    let s = String::from("hello");
    let r1 = &s;     // OK
    let r2 = &s;     // OK - multiple immutable refs allowed
    println!("{} {}", r1, r2);
}

// Mutable borrowing - only one allowed
fn main() {
    let mut s = String::from("hello");
    let r1 = &mut s;  // OK
    // let r2 = &mut s;  // ERROR: cannot borrow as mutable twice
    r1.push_str(" world");
    println!("{}", r1);
}

// Cannot mix mutable and immutable
fn main() {
    let mut s = String::from("hello");
    let r1 = &s;      // Immutable borrow
    // let r2 = &mut s;  // ERROR: cannot borrow as mutable
    println!("{}", r1);
    // After last use of r1, we can borrow mutably (NLL)
    let r2 = &mut s;  // OK due to Non-Lexical Lifetimes
    r2.push_str(" world");
}

Step 3: Work with Lifetimes

Lifetime Annotations:

// Lifetime tells compiler how long references are valid
fn longest<'a>(x: &'a str, y: &'a str) -> &'a str {
    if x.len() > y.len() { x } else { y }
}

// Struct with references needs lifetime annotations
struct ImportantExcerpt<'a> {
    part: &'a str,
}

impl<'a> ImportantExcerpt<'a> {
    // Method that returns reference to self doesn't need annotation
    fn level(&self) -> i32 {
        3
    }

    // Method returning reference needs to specify lifetime
    fn announce_and_return_part(&self, announcement: &str) -> &str {
        println!("Attention please: {}", announcement);
        self.part  // Lifetime 'a is inferred
    }
}

Lifetime Elision Rules:

// Rule 1: Each input reference gets its own lifetime
fn foo(x: &str) -> &str  // Becomes: fn foo<'a>(x: &'a str) -> &'a str

// Rule 2: If one input lifetime, output gets same lifetime
fn first_word(s: &str) -> &str  // Works without annotation

// Rule 3: If &self, output gets lifetime of self
impl MyStruct {
    fn get_name(&self) -> &str { &self.name }  // Works
}

Step 4: Implement Error Handling

Result and Option Patterns:

use std::fs::File;
use std::io::{self, Read};

// Using Result for fallible operations
fn read_file_contents(path: &str) -> Result<String, io::Error> {
    let mut file = File::open(path)?;  // ? propagates errors
    let mut contents = String::new();
    file.read_to_string(&mut contents)?;
    Ok(contents)
}

// Custom error types
#[derive(Debug)]
enum AppError {
    IoError(io::Error),
    ParseError(String),
    NotFound,
}

impl From<io::Error> for AppError {
    fn from(error: io::Error) -> Self {
        AppError::IoError(error)
    }
}

// Using thiserror crate (recommended)
use thiserror::Error;

#[derive(Error, Debug)]
enum AppError {
    #[error("IO error: {0}")]
    Io(#[from] io::Error),

    #[error("Parse error: {message}")]
    Parse { message: String },

    #[error("Not found: {0}")]
    NotFound(String),
}

// Option for optional values
fn find_user(id: u64) -> Option<User> {
    users.iter().find(|u| u.id == id).cloned()
}

// Combining Option and Result
fn process_user(id: u64) -> Result<String, AppError> {
    let user = find_user(id).ok_or(AppError::NotFound(format!("User {}", id)))?;
    Ok(user.name)
}

Step 5: Write Async Rust

Async/Await Patterns:

use tokio;

// Basic async function
async fn fetch_data(url: &str) -> Result<String, reqwest::Error> {
    let response = reqwest::get(url).await?;
    let body = response.text().await?;
    Ok(body)
}

// Running async code
#[tokio::main]
async fn main() {
    let result = fetch_data("https://api.example.com").await;
    match result {
        Ok(data) => println!("Data: {}", data),
        Err(e) => eprintln!("Error: {}", e),
    }
}

// Concurrent execution
async fn fetch_multiple() -> Vec<String> {
    let urls = vec![
        "https://api.example.com/1",
        "https://api.example.com/2",
        "https://api.example.com/3",
    ];

    // Run all requests concurrently
    let futures: Vec<_> = urls.iter().map(|url| fetch_data(url)).collect();
    let results = futures::future::join_all(futures).await;

    results.into_iter().filter_map(|r| r.ok()).collect()
}

// Spawning tasks
async fn background_task() {
    tokio::spawn(async {
        // This runs in the background
        loop {
            tokio::time::sleep(Duration::from_secs(60)).await;
            cleanup_old_data().await;
        }
    });
}

Step 6: Implement Traits and Generics

Trait Patterns:

// Defining traits
trait Summary {
    fn summarize(&self) -> String;

    // Default implementation
    fn summarize_author(&self) -> String {
        String::from("(Anonymous)")
    }
}

// Implementing traits
struct Article {
    title: String,
    author: String,
    content: String,
}

impl Summary for Article {
    fn summarize(&self) -> String {
        format!("{}, by {}", self.title, self.author)
    }

    fn summarize_author(&self) -> String {
        format!("@{}", self.author)
    }
}

// Trait bounds
fn notify<T: Summary>(item: &T) {
    println!("Breaking news! {}", item.summarize());
}

// Multiple trait bounds
fn notify<T: Summary + Display>(item: &T) { ... }

// Where clause for complex bounds
fn some_function<T, U>(t: &T, u: &U) -> i32
where
    T: Display + Clone,
    U: Clone + Debug,
{ ... }

// Associated types
trait Iterator {
    type Item;
    fn next(&mut self) -> Option<Self::Item>;
}

impl Iterator for Counter {
    type Item = u32;
    fn next(&mut self) -> Option<Self::Item> {
        // ...
    }
}

Step 7: Write Safe Unsafe Code

Unsafe Rust Guidelines:

// When to use unsafe
// 1. Dereferencing raw pointers
// 2. Calling unsafe functions
// 3. Accessing mutable statics
// 4. Implementing unsafe traits
// 5. Accessing union fields

// Raw pointer example
fn raw_pointer_example() {
    let mut num = 5;
    let r1 = &num as *const i32;      // Immutable raw pointer
    let r2 = &mut num as *mut i32;    // Mutable raw pointer

    unsafe {
        println!("r1: {}", *r1);
        *r2 = 10;
        println!("r2: {}", *r2);
    }
}

// Safe abstraction over unsafe code
fn split_at_mut(values: &mut [i32], mid: usize) -> (&mut [i32], &mut [i32]) {
    let len = values.len();
    let ptr = values.as_mut_ptr();

    assert!(mid <= len);

    unsafe {
        (
            std::slice::from_raw_parts_mut(ptr, mid),
            std::slice::from_raw_parts_mut(ptr.add(mid), len - mid),
        )
    }
}

// FFI example
extern "C" {
    fn abs(input: i32) -> i32;
}

fn main() {
    unsafe {
        println!("Absolute value: {}", abs(-3));
    }
}

Unsafe Best Practices:

Best Practices

• Embrace ownership - Don't fight the borrow checker
• Clone sparingly - Understand the performance cost
• Use iterators - More idiomatic than indexing
• Prefer &str over String - When you don't need ownership
• Handle all Results - Don't use unwrap() in production
• Use clippy - Catches common mistakes
• Minimize unsafe - Keep it small and documented
• Write tests - Especially for unsafe code

Common Patterns

Pattern 1: Builder Pattern

#[derive(Default)]
struct RequestBuilder {
    url: String,
    method: String,
    headers: Vec<(String, String)>,
    body: Option<String>,
}

impl RequestBuilder {
    fn new() -> Self {
        Self::default()
    }

    fn url(mut self, url: impl Into<String>) -> Self {
        self.url = url.into();
        self
    }

    fn method(mut self, method: impl Into<String>) -> Self {
        self.method = method.into();
        self
    }

    fn header(mut self, key: impl Into<String>, value: impl Into<String>) -> Self {
        self.headers.push((key.into(), value.into()));
        self
    }

    fn body(mut self, body: impl Into<String>) -> Self {
        self.body = Some(body.into());
        self
    }

    fn build(self) -> Request {
        Request {
            url: self.url,
            method: self.method,
            headers: self.headers,
            body: self.body,
        }
    }
}

// Usage
let request = RequestBuilder::new()
    .url("https://api.example.com")
    .method("POST")
    .header("Content-Type", "application/json")
    .body(r#"{"key": "value"}"#)
    .build();

Pattern 2: Type State Pattern

// Compile-time state machine
struct Locked;
struct Unlocked;

struct Door<State> {
    _state: std::marker::PhantomData<State>,
}

impl Door<Locked> {
    fn unlock(self) -> Door<Unlocked> {
        Door { _state: std::marker::PhantomData }
    }
}

impl Door<Unlocked> {
    fn lock(self) -> Door<Locked> {
        Door { _state: std::marker::PhantomData }
    }

    fn open(&self) {
        println!("Door is open");
    }
}

// Compile-time enforcement
let door: Door<Locked> = Door { _state: std::marker::PhantomData };
// door.open();  // ERROR: no method `open` for Door<Locked>
let door = door.unlock();
door.open();  // OK

Quality Checklist

• No unwrap() in production code
• All Results handled properly
• Clippy warnings addressed
• Unsafe code minimized and documented
• Lifetimes explicit where needed
• Tests cover edge cases
• Documentation includes examples
• Cargo fmt applied

Related Skills

• performance-testing - Benchmarking Rust code
• security-review - Unsafe code review
• cicd-architect - Rust CI/CD pipelines
• code-quality - Rust code standards

Version: 1.0.0 Last Updated: January 2026 Based on: The Rust Book, awesome-claude-code-subagents patterns

Iterative Refinement Strategy

This skill is optimized for an iterative approach:

1. Execute: Perform the core steps defined above.
2. Review: Critically analyze the output (coverage, quality, completeness).
3. Refine: If targets aren't met, repeat the specific implementation steps with improved context.
4. Loop: Continue until the definition of done is satisfied.