Agent-Skills.md

Agent Skills: Swift Memory Management

Manage ARC, Weak/Unowned References, and Capture Lists in Swift. Use when managing Swift ARC, avoiding retain cycles, or configuring capture lists in closures. (triggers: **/*.swift, weak, unowned, capture, deinit, retain)

UncategorizedID: hoangnguyen0403/agent-skills-standard/swift-memory-management

Repository

hoangnguyen0403/agent-skills-standard
HoangNguyen0403License: Apache-2.0
362103

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pnpm dlx add-skill https://github.com/HoangNguyen0403/agent-skills-standard/tree/HEAD/skills/swift/swift-memory-management

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skills/swift/swift-memory-management/SKILL.md

Skill Metadata

Name
swift-memory-management
Description
"Manage ARC, Weak/Unowned References, and Capture Lists in Swift. Use when managing Swift ARC, avoiding retain cycles, or configuring capture lists in closures. (triggers: **/*.swift, weak, unowned, capture, deinit, retain)"

Swift Memory Management

Priority: P0

Implementation Guidelines

ARC Fundamentals

  • Default: Strong references. Swift automatically manages retain/release.
  • Weak: Use weak if the reference can become nil during its lifetime (delegates, optional parent refs).
  • Unowned: Use unowned if the reference is guaranteed to outlive the referring object (rare; prefer weak).

Capture Lists

  • Closures: Place [weak self] at the beginning of the closure's capture list. Pattern: { [weak self] in guard let self = self else { return } }.
  • Self in Structs: No capture list needed (self is copied by value).
  • Multiple Captures: [weak self, weak delegate].

Retain Cycles

  • Delegates: Always weak var delegate. The delegate protocol should inherit from AnyObject (e.g., protocol MyDelegate: AnyObject {}).
  • Closures as Properties: Use weak or unowned in capture list.
  • two-way References: One side must be weak.

Anti-Patterns

  • No strong var delegate: Use weak.
  • No self in escaping closures: Use [weak self].
  • No unowned unless certain: Default to weak to prevent crashes.

References