Always provide safe defaults or fallbacks when working with optional or potentially undefined values. Avoid using non-null assertion operators (!) on optional parameters, and ensure proper handling in type checking and value merging scenarios.

Key practices:

Example:

// ❌ Dangerous - assumes info exists
return val(info!) as T;

// ✅ Safe - provides default
return val(info || { props: {} as Props }) as T;

// ❌ No fallback for missing CSS variable  
color: 'var(--ant-tooltip-color)',

// ✅ Provides fallback
color: `var(--ant-tooltip-color, ${tooltipColor})`,

This prevents runtime errors and ensures predictable behavior when dealing with optional or missing values.