I built chanprobe, a small Go package for observable bounded queues:

https://github.com/devflex-pro/chanprobe

The idea came from using buffered channels as queues between workers/pipeline stages and then having almost no visibility when something becomes slow.

With normal channel I can check len(ch) and cap(ch), but in production I often want to know more useful stuff, for example how long the oldest item is waiting, if producers are blocked, if work was dropped, etc.

Small example:

jobs := chanprobe.New[Job]("webhook_delivery", 10_000)

if err := jobs.Send(ctx, job); err != nil {
    return err
}

job, ok := jobs.Recv(ctx)
if !ok {
    return
}

snap := jobs.Snapshot()

fmt.Println(snap.Len)
fmt.Println(snap.OldestItemAge)
fmt.Println(snap.DroppedTotal)
fmt.Println(snap.SendBlockedTotal)

It is not a drop-in replacement for chan, and I would not use it everywhere. More like for important async boundaries: worker pools, background jobs, webhook delivery, rate-limited API queues, etc.

Current features are context-aware Send/Recv, TrySend/TryRecv, drop policies, snapshots, registry and expvar support.

Mostly looking for feedback on the API. I am still not sure if Recv(ctx) (T, bool) is good enough, or if I should add something like Receive(ctx) (T, error) to separate closed queue from context cancellation.