cardano-dev-skills

Cardano Dev Skills

Community-curated Cardano developer knowledge — bundled skills, documentation, and tooling for AI coding agents.

Works as a Claude Code plugin, Codex skill set, or standalone reference.

📖 Website: https://cardano-foundation.github.io/cardano-dev-skills/

Why this exists

Training data on Cardano drifts fast. Conway era changed governance, Aiken syntax evolves, SDK APIs ship breaking changes monthly. An AI agent answering "how do I write a vesting validator in Aiken?" from training data alone gets it wrong more often than right.

This plugin solves that by shipping:

• Authoritative bundled docs from 55 active Cardano projects (auto-refreshed weekly from upstream).
• Behavioral skills that encode common workflows: scaffolding, writing validators, building transactions, governance, optimization, debugging.
• Hooks that auto-consult bundled context before the agent reaches for training data or the web.

End result: the agent answers from current, project-authoritative sources instead of memorized snapshots.

What's inside

• 15 developer skills — each a focused workflow
• 55 documentation sources — bundled locally under docs/sources/, auto-refreshed weekly via GitHub Actions
• Hooks — SessionStart reports doc freshness; a UserPromptSubmit auto-consultation hook is in development

Skills

Skill	What it does
cardano-context	Install a per-project Cardano directive into CLAUDE.md so the agent reliably consults bundled skills and docs
scaffold-project	Bootstrap a new Cardano project across Aiken + 4 off-chain stacks
write-validator	Guide writing a validator from spec (default Aiken)
review-contract	Security review of a validator
optimize-validator	Lower CPU / memory / script-size costs
build-transaction	Build & submit transactions across SDKs
design-token	Design native tokens, NFTs, CIP-25/68/113 metadata
debug-transaction	Diagnose failing transactions
query-chain	Pick the right query strategy (Blockfrost / Ogmios / indexer)
setup-devnet	Local devnet with Yaci DevKit or testnet setup
connect-wallet	CIP-30 wallet integration for dApps
governance-guide	CIP-1694 governance, DRep, voting, treasury
explain-eutxo	Cardano's UTxO model for newcomers
explain-cip	Walk through a specific CIP
suggest-tooling	Recommend an SDK / framework given the use case

What we add (and don't)

In scope: generic developer building blocks — SDKs, frameworks, validator libraries, design patterns, language tooling, infrastructure, protocol/standard specs, reference implementations of patterns.

Out of scope: product docs for specific deployed dApps (SundaeSwap, Minswap, Liqwid, Indigo, JPG Store, etc.). This repo teaches how to build a DEX, a lending protocol, an NFT marketplace — not how a particular branded product works. If users want product-specific integration help, their agent can search externally.

Borderline rule: if the upstream repo's primary purpose is "use OUR product", it's out. If it's "here's how X pattern works, here's the reference code", it's in.

See docs/CONTRIBUTING.md for the full policy and the maintenance bar for source vetting.

Install

Claude Code (recommended)

In any Claude Code session:

/plugin marketplace add cardano-foundation/cardano-dev-skills
/plugin install cardano-dev-skills@cardano-dev-skills

Installed once, active in every Claude Code session in any directory. Verify with /plugin list.

Codex / other agents

git clone https://github.com/cardano-foundation/cardano-dev-skills.git
cd your-project
ln -s ../cardano-dev-skills/skills .agents/skills

Standalone

Skills are pure Markdown — read skills/*/SKILL.md directly or with grep.

How to set the Cardano context

Three complementary mechanisms, listed from most reliable to least:

Per-project directive (recommended) — /cardano-context

Even with the plugin installed globally, Claude sometimes answers Cardano questions from training data instead of consulting these skills and bundled docs. Run the cardano-context skill once per project to install a durable directive:

/cardano-context

What it does: