Data flow, shared state, and property wrappers

It is important that SwiftUI body code and logic code be kept separate in order to make code easier to read, write, and maintain. That usually means placing code into methods rather than inline in the body property, but often also means carving functionality out into separate @Observable classes.

These rules help ensure code is efficient and works well in the long term.

Shared state

• @Observable classes must be marked @MainActor unless the project has Main Actor default actor isolation. Flag any @Observable class missing this annotation.
• All shared data should use @Observable classes with @State (for ownership) and @Bindable / @Environment (for passing).
• Strongly prefer not to use ObservableObject, @Published, @StateObject, @ObservedObject, or @EnvironmentObject unless they are unavoidable, or if they exist in legacy/integration contexts when changing architecture would be complicated.

Local state

• @State should be marked private and only owned by the view that created it.
• If a view stores a class instance that contains expensive-to-recompute data, e.g. CIContext, it can be stored using @State even though it is not an observable object. This effectively uses @State as a cache – storing something persistently, but not doing any change tracking on it since it's not an observable object.

Bindings

• Strongly prefer to avoid creating bindings using Binding(get:set:) in view body code. It is much cleaner and simpler to use a binding provided by @State, @Binding or similar, then use onChange() to trigger any effects.
• If the user needs to enter a number into a TextField, bind the TextField to a numeric value such as Int or Double, then use its format initializer like this: TextField("Enter your score", value: $score, format: .number). Apply either .keyboardType(.numberPad) (for integers) or .keyboardType(.decimalPad) (for floating-point numbers) as appropriate. Using the modifier alone is *not* sufficient.

Working with data

• Prefer to make structs conform to Identifiable rather than using id: \.someProperty in SwiftUI code.
• Never attempt to use @AppStorage inside an @Observable class, even if marked @ObservationIgnored – it will *not* trigger view updates when a change happens.

SwiftData

• If you only need the number of items matching a query, consider ModelContext.fetchCount() with a fetch descriptor. This will *not* live update if the data changes unless something else triggers the update, such as @Query, so it should be used carefully.

For more help with SwiftData, suggest the SwiftData Pro agent skill.

If the project uses SwiftData with CloudKit

• Never use @Attribute(.unique).
• Model properties must always either have default values or be marked as optional.
• All relationships must be marked optional.