Effect v4

Use this skill for general Effect mechanics and routing. For Theseus product/domain choices, use the Theseus design skill.

Route To Narrow Skills

Load the narrower skill when the task clearly matches it:

• effect-services-layers - Context.Service, service interfaces, Layer construction, dependency graphs, test seams.
• effect-errors-schema - typed failures, defects, Cause, Schema decoding/encoding, schema-backed errors, boundary normalization.
• effect-concurrency-lifecycle - Fiber, Deferred, Queue, PubSub, Stream, Scope, interruption, background loops, backpressure.
• effect-observability-time - Clock, Duration, timeout, retry schedules, logging, tracing spans, metrics, config, redaction.
• effect-testing-runtime - Effect.runPromise boundaries, test layers, deterministic services, TestClock/TestContext, runtime verification.

If several apply, load only the ones needed for the change.

Operating Model

Effect code is explicit about:

• what succeeds
• what can fail
• what services are required
• what resources must be acquired and released
• what runs concurrently and how it is interrupted

Good Effect code keeps these facts in the type signature until a deliberate boundary handles them.

Workflow

Effect APIs move. Before using an unfamiliar API:

1. Search current repo usage.
2. Resolve the installed effect package from the lockfile or package manager layout, then inspect its local type declarations.
3. Prefer patterns already used in packages/theseus-core and packages/theseus-server.
4. Treat web examples as v3 unless verified against local v4 types.

Useful searches:

rg "Context.Service|Layer.mergeAll|Layer.provideMerge|Effect.catchTag|Effect.forkDetach" packages
find node_modules -path '*effect*/dist/Effect.d.ts' -o -path '*effect*/dist/Schema.d.ts'
rg "export declare const catch|forkDetach|TaggedErrorClass" node_modules

The repo already has @effect/language-service configured in root tsconfig.json. Trust its diagnostics when Effect types look strange.

Effect language-service commands:

• bun run effect:diagnostics - run Effect diagnostics across configured non-web packages.
• bun run effect:ls:check - check whether local TypeScript is patched for build-time Effect diagnostics.
• bun run effect:ls:patch - patch local TypeScript so Effect diagnostics surface through compiler tooling.

Type Shape

Effect.Effect<Success, Error, Requirements> means:

• Success - success value
• Error - expected typed failure
• Requirements - required services/environment

Expected failures belong in the error channel. Defects are bugs, thrown exceptions, rejected promise defects, or violated invariants; handle them only at boundaries.

Core Constructors

Use the constructor that matches the boundary:

Effect.succeed(value)        // pure success value
Effect.fail(error)           // expected typed failure
Effect.sync(() => value)     // sync, non-throwing side effect
Effect.try(() => risky())    // sync code that may throw
Effect.promise(() => p)      // promise that cannot usefully map rejection
Effect.tryPromise({          // promise with rejection normalized to typed failure
  try: () => fetchThing(),
  catch: (cause) => new FetchFailed({ cause }),
})

Rules:

• Use Effect.try / Effect.tryPromise at foreign boundaries.
• Normalize foreign exceptions into typed errors as early as possible.
• Do not wrap already-effectful code in tryPromise.
• Do not use Effect.runPromise as a composition tool.

Composition

Prefer Effect.gen for sequential business logic and pipe combinators for local transformations.

const program = Effect.gen(function* () {
  const user = yield* Users.find(userId)
  const account = yield* Accounts.find(user.accountId)
  yield* Audit.log({ type: "account.viewed", userId })
  return account
})

Rules:

• Use Effect.map for success-value transformation.
• Use Effect.flatMap when the next step returns an Effect.
• Use Effect.tap for effectful observation without changing the value.
• Use Effect.all for independent effects; set concurrency when work is unbounded or expensive.
• Use Effect.partition when partial success is a valid outcome.
• Use validation mode on collection operations only when the caller needs all failures, not fail-fast behavior.
• Keep Effect.gen blocks linear; extract named effects when nesting grows.
• Use Effect.fn("Name") for important service methods or runtime operations where tracing and better diagnostic names matter.

Pattern Matching

Use Match for tagged unions or multi-branch domain logic when chained conditionals obscure exhaustiveness.

import { Match } from "effect"

const render = Match.type<Event>().pipe(
  Match.tag("Started", (event) => `started ${event.id}`),
  Match.tag("Done", (event) => `done ${event.id}`),
  Match.exhaustive,
)

Rules:

• Prefer Match.tag / Match.tags for _tag unions.
• Prefer exhaustive matching when the input union is closed.
• Keep simple two-branch cases as normal conditionals when that is clearer.

v4 Translation Table

Common v3 or stale examples need translation:

Do not cargo-cult Effect.Service unless local v4 types and repo patterns support it for the case at hand. This repo currently uses Context.Service.

Anti-Patterns

Avoid these unless the file is explicitly a process/test/script boundary:

• Effect.runPromise or Effect.runSync inside services or domain functions.
• throw for expected failures inside Effect.gen.
• try/catch around yield* expecting to catch typed Effect failures.
• console.log in runtime code.
• direct process.env access outside config boundaries.
• Option.getOrThrow in runtime code.
• unbounded queues or concurrency without an explicit bounding argument.
• type assertions that erase the error or requirements channel (as any, as never) instead of fixing the layer/error model.

Theseus Checks

Before finalizing Effect changes:

• Search for matching local patterns.
• Re-read the involved service/layer/error signatures.
• Check whether the code is at a boundary or inside the domain; choose schemas/errors accordingly.
• Run the narrow package test when behavior changed.
• Run bun run typecheck after service, layer, schema, or error-channel changes.
• If an API was inferred from external material, verify it in the locally installed Effect type declarations before committing the pattern.