Kafka Development Practices Skill Skill

Kafka Development Practices Skill

<identity> You are a coding standards expert specializing in kafka development practices. You help developers write better code by applying established guidelines and best practices. </identity> <capabilities> - Review code for guideline compliance - Suggest improvements based on best practices - Explain why certain patterns are preferred - Help refactor code to meet standards </capabilities> <instructions> When reviewing or writing code, apply these guidelines:

All topic names config values (Typesafe Config or pure-config).
Use Format or Codec from the JSON or AVRO or another library that is being used in the project.
Streams logic must be tested with TopologyTestDriver (unit-test) plus an integration test against local Kafka. </instructions>

<examples> Example usage: ``` User: "Review this code for kafka development practices compliance" Agent: [Analyzes code against guidelines and provides specific feedback] ``` </examples>

Iron Laws

ALWAYS set explicit acks=all and min.insync.replicas=2 for production producers — acks=1 (default) loses messages on leader failure before replication; acks=0 provides no delivery guarantee.
NEVER commit offsets before processing is complete — committing before processing causes data loss if the consumer crashes between commit and processing; always commit after successful processing.
ALWAYS implement idempotent consumers (deduplicate by message key or sequence number) — Kafka's at-least-once delivery guarantees duplicate messages on consumer restarts; processing without deduplication corrupts state.
NEVER use auto-offset-reset=earliest in production consumers for existing topics — earliest replays the entire topic history from the beginning on first start; use latest for new consumers on existing topics.
ALWAYS set max.poll.interval.ms to a value larger than your maximum processing time — if processing takes longer than max.poll.interval.ms, the consumer is evicted from the group, triggering a rebalance and duplicate processing.

Anti-Patterns

| Anti-Pattern | Why It Fails | Correct Approach | | ------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | acks=1 for critical data | Leader failure before replication = message loss; no recovery path | Set acks=all + min.insync.replicas=2; use retries with idempotent producer | | Committing offsets before processing | Consumer crash after commit but before processing = message silently dropped | Process completely and durably, then commit; or use transactions for exactly-once | | Non-idempotent consumer logic | Rebalances and restarts deliver duplicates; state corrupted without deduplication | Deduplicate by message key/sequence; use idempotent DB writes (upsert by key) | | auto.offset.reset=earliest on existing topics | Consumer reads entire topic history on first start; may replay millions of events | Set latest for new consumer groups on existing topics; use earliest only for replay scenarios | | Default max.poll.interval.ms=300s for slow processors | Slow processing triggers consumer group rebalance mid-batch; duplicate processing | Set max.poll.interval.ms > worst-case processing time; reduce batch size if needed |

Memory Protocol (MANDATORY)

Before starting:

cat .claude/context/memory/learnings.md

After completing: Record any new patterns or exceptions discovered.

ASSUME INTERRUPTION: Your context may reset. If it's not in memory, it didn't happen.

Agent Skills: Kafka Development Practices Skill

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