name: avalonia-zafiro-development
description: Mandatory skills, conventions, and behavioral rules for Avalonia UI development using the Zafiro toolkit.

Avalonia Zafiro Development

This skill defines the mandatory conventions and behavioral rules for developing cross-platform applications with Avalonia UI and the Zafiro toolkit. These rules prioritize maintainability, correctness, and a functional-reactive approach.

Core Pillars

1. Functional-Reactive MVVM: Pure MVVM logic using DynamicData and ReactiveUI.
2. Safety & Predictability: Explicit error handling with Result types and avoidance of exceptions for flow control.
3. Cross-Platform Excellence: Strictly Avalonia-independent ViewModels and composition-over-inheritance.
4. Zafiro First: Leverage existing Zafiro abstractions and helpers to avoid redundancy.

Guides

• Core Technical Skills & Architecture: Fundamental skills and architectural principles.
• Naming & Coding Standards: Rules for naming, fields, and error handling.
• Avalonia, Zafiro & Reactive Rules: Specific guidelines for UI, Zafiro integration, and DynamicData pipelines.
• Zafiro Shortcuts: Concise mappings for common Rx/Zafiro operations.
• Common Patterns: Advanced patterns like RefreshableCollection and Validation.

Procedure Before Writing Code

1. Search First: Search the codebase for similar implementations or existing Zafiro helpers.
2. Reusable Extensions: If a helper is missing, propose a new reusable extension method instead of inlining complex logic.
3. Reactive Pipelines: Ensure DynamicData operators are used instead of plain Rx where applicable.