Make deliberate choices about error handling strategies based on the context. Decide between early returns with appropriate error reporting, panic mechanisms, or silent failures with diagnostics:

  1. Early returns for expected error conditions:
    // Prefer this when the error is expected in normal operation
    if !output.status.success() {
        return Err(anyhow::anyhow!(
            "Git checkout failed: {}",
            String::from_utf8_lossy(&output.stderr)
        ));
    }
    
  2. Panic only for true invariant violations:
    // Use panic! over unreachable! when an invariant is violated
    match definition.scope(db).node(db) {
        NodeWithScopeKind::Class(_) => {
            panic!("invalid definition kind for type variable")
        }
        // Valid cases...
    }
    
  3. Silent failures with diagnostics when appropriate:
    // Return a sensible default and let type checking handle the error
    if !is_callable(test_expr) {
        return Truthiness::AlwaysFalse;
    }
    

Always document functions that can panic and under what conditions. When handling results, be explicit about error propagation choices - consider whether errors should be logged, propagated, or transformed into different error types based on the needs of the caller.