Henki ROS 2 Best Practices

Best ROS 2 practices on architecture and clean code from Henki Robotics. For people and AI.

Best Practices

All the best practices are defined in a single document:

• Henki ROS 2 Best Practices

Installation

Clone the repository in your project root folder:

git clone https://github.com/henki-robotics/henki_ros2_best_practices.git

Henki ROS 2 Best Practices can be easily integrated with your favorite coding agent:

• Claude Code

  Add in your CLAUDE.md file:

  Always read and follow the best practices defined in:
  - henki_ros2_best_practices/henki_ros2_best_practices.md
  

Usage

People: Read the best practices, or pass them to your coworkers. Start following them in your day-to-day development.

AI: If you followed the installation instructions for AI, your coding agent now automatically always complies with the best practices when writing code! Try out for example the following tasks:

Create me a new ROS 2 package with a Python node that subscribes to /odom topic and publishes to a single topic the robot speed in km/h and mph.

Review my repository against the Henki ROS 2 Best Practices. Write me which parts of the system comply with the best practices, and which ones do not. Write me a review document in .md format.

Examples

We provide a demo example of ROS 2 package generation using Claude Code (claude-opus-4-6) with and without applying our best practices.

We asked Claude to complete the following task:

Create me a new ROS 2 package with a Python node that subscribes to /odom topic and publishes to a single topic the robot speed in km/h and mph.

In our Agentic Examples repository, you'll find two main folders:

• baseline/: Example ROS 2 package generated by AI without applying Henki ROS 2 best practices. This example serves as a reference point for comparison.
• best_practices/: Example ROS 2 packages generated by AI with Henki ROS 2 best practices applied.

Compare the results and see how applying the best practices improves the generated code. Notice differences in:

• Package structure - Proper use of launch and config files.
• Separation of concerns - Separation of the core application logic from the ROS 2 node communication.
• Message Interfaces - Custom RobotSpeed.msg interface instead of deprecated Float64MultiArray. Separate _msgs package for custom messages.
• Logging - Throttled logs to avoid log spam.
• Tests - Unittests to test the core application logic. No flaky ROS communication in unittests.
• Documentation - Clear package README.md file with API and parameters.

Disclaimer: We are heavily experimenting the agentic integration with the best practices. If you find any unexpected agent behavior caused by the best practices, please report in a new GitHub issue.

Contributing

We invite all developers to contribute to the creation of high-quality best practices in this repository. For this, we have determined few guidelines, which we obviously call "Best practices for writing best practices":

• Keep the practices short, clear and concise
• Explain shortly why the practice exists.
• Do not use AI to generate new best practices.
• Ensure that all the suggested practices are based on facts and tested on real conditions.
• Avoid suggesting subjective and personal opinions and preferences.

Maintainers

These best practices are maintained by Henki Robotics.

Read a blog post where we highlight some of these best practices and explain how to enforce them in projects: ROS 2 Best Practices - Henki Robotics