Anchor Plan

Docs references

• Anchor documentation: https://www.anchor-lang.com/docs
• Solana documentation: https://solana.com/docs

Follow this process when planning out Solana Programs with Anchor:

1. Ask the user what is the main purpose of the Program

   • You need to understand the goal or intention of what the user wants to build
   • Analyse what the users response is, go deep on their thinking and ask clarifying questions
   • AskUserQuestion can be used here to gain further clarification on their goals and objectives

2. Ask the user who the main users of the Program will be

   • You need to know who will be interacting with the Program so you can understand how to do the overall structure
   • Analyse the user response to see if they have thought of all users of the program, if the user is a beginner they might not fully understand everything
   • Investigate how these users may also affect the Program concurrently, or at least think about this and document it
   • AskUserQuestion can be used here to gain further clarification on the users of the Program

3. Define the accounts

   • What states need to be stored?
   • What account structures are needed for the Program?
   • What are their fields and their types?
   • Analyse this against user goals as account space costs rent, AskUserQuestion could be used here if required
   • How much space will this account and its values take up?
   • Consider const values that will represent this
   • What is the relationship between accounts? Does one reference the other? Is there a one-to-many relationship?
   • Which accounts are created once and never change? Which get updated frequently?

4. Map out PDAs and derive account structs

   • What accounts need to be PDAs versus keypair accounts?
   • What seeds will uniquely identify each PDA? Prevent collisions here
   • Will bumps be stored in the account or re-derived?
   • Document each PDA with its seeds, eg: User Stake = [b"stake", user, pool]
   • Consider how users of the Program will act on the accounts you have defined
   • For each instruction context, what accounts are needed?
   • What other programs will be needed? Eg. System Program, Token Program
   • What constraints are needed on each account? (has_one, seeds, mut, signer)
   • Who has authority to change state?

5. Design the instructions

   • What can users do within the Program?
   • For each instruction, define:
     • A clear description of what the instruction does
     • What context (accounts, signers, programs) is needed?
     • What validations must pass before the logic runs?
     • What state changes occur? Which accounts are mutated and how?
     • Should an event be emitted for this instruction?
   • Consider the order of operations — do some instructions need to be called before others? (eg. initialize before deposit)
   • What errors should be flagged during the course of an instruction?
   • AskUserQuestion to walk through each instruction with the user

6. Define errors that can happen in the program

   • What could potentially go wrong from your understanding of the program?
   • What custom errors are needed in order to catch these?
   • AskUserQuestion can be useful here just to double check the logic with the user, and highlight any potential areas that they haven't thought about

7. Access Control

   • For each instruction, who needs to sign the transaction?
   • Are there admin or authority-only instructions? How is the authority set and can it be transferred?
   • Are there any multi-signature requirements?
   • What happens if an unauthorised user attempts to call an instruction?
   • Consider upgrade authority — who can upgrade the program, or should it be immutable?
   • Consider invariants — what conditions must always hold true in the program? For example: balances summing correctly, authority signers matching stored keys, timestamps being sequential, accounts never entering invalid states
   • AskUserQuestion to clarify with the user who should have access to what instruction or functionality within the Program

8. Compile the Program Plan

   • Using all the information gathered, produce a complete program plan
   • The most up to date documentation can be found at: https://www.anchor-lang.com/docs
   • This plan should be clear and specific, following the plan-template.md
   • This should be created as a markdown file for the user, which they can use to build out their Program