Skills¶
Introduction¶
Product Skills are small, modular instruction sets that teach an AI coding agent how to work effectively across specific parts of the Polkadot Products stack. A skill bundles together what the agent needs to know about one slice of the surface (chain connections, Bulletin storage, contract interactions, and so on) so that when you ask it for help in that area, it has the right context loaded.
If you are working on a Polkadot Product with an AI coding agent, installing the relevant skills tilts the agent toward correct, idiomatic answers instead of generic boilerplate.
The skills live inside the paritytech/product-sdk monorepo under product-sdk/skills/.
Skills List¶
| Skill | What It Covers |
|---|---|
product-sdk-app-builder | End-to-end scaffolding and implementation of Polkadot apps using @parity/product-sdk packages. Foundational orchestrator skill — reach for this when starting a new project or scaffolding chain interactions. |
product-sdk-cloud-storage | Upload and retrieve data on the Polkadot Bulletin Chain. Covers CID-based content-addressed storage, the CloudStorageClient SDK, chunked uploads, CID computation, and the authorization pre-flight. Reads are container-only — the SDK does not fall back to a public IPFS gateway. |
product-sdk-chain-connection | Typed access to Polkadot chains via @parity/product-sdk-chain-client and @parity/product-sdk-descriptors. Covers preset and BYOD (bring-your-own-descriptors) paths, state queries, and storage subscriptions. |
product-sdk-contracts | Smart contract interaction (PolkaVM / Solidity) on Asset Hub. Covers ContractManager with cdm.json manifests, ad-hoc createContract, ContractRuntime, and contract type codegen. |
product-sdk-statement-store | Publish and subscribe to ephemeral messages on the Polkadot Statement Store. Covers StatementStoreClient lifecycle, host and local connection modes, channels with last-write-wins semantics, and the 512-byte size limit. |
product-sdk-transactions | Submit transactions, manage signers, and derive keys. Covers @parity/product-sdk-tx, @parity/product-sdk-signer, and @parity/product-sdk-keys — multi-provider wallet accounts, Host API signing (Desktop/Mobile), and dev signers for testnet. |
product-sdk-utilities | Foundational utilities — SS58/H160 address encoding, AES/ChaCha/NaCl crypto, HKDF key derivation, byte encoding, token (planck) formatting, key-value storage, and structured logging. |
product-sdk-individuality | Personhood and membership standing on the Individuality chain. Covers readPersonhoodState from a username or an account, lookupUsername, the seven-state PersonhoodState union, and withAsPerson for dispatching under a person origin. |
migrating-to-product-sdk | Migrating an existing codebase onto @parity/product-sdk. Detects legacy stacks (polkadot-apps, novasamatech, hand-rolled crypto or IPFS, polkadot-api 1.x) and writes a per-repo migration spec. Discovery and planning only — it does not edit code. |
How to Install¶
Claude Code¶
The repo ships a plugin marketplace, so no clone is needed. Add the marketplace, then install the plugin:
That installs every skill in the table above at once.
Other Agents¶
For Cursor, Codex, Cline, Windsurf, or a custom harness, clone the repo:
Skills live under product-sdk/skills/<skill-name>/ in the cloned directory. Register whichever skills are relevant with your agent using that agent's skill or context-loading mechanism.
Skills trigger based on context. You can also invoke a skill directly by name before asking a question. For example, before asking the agent for help chunking a large upload to the Bulletin Chain, load the relevant context up front:
The agent now has the SDK's API patterns and best practices loaded before it answers, instead of falling back on generic JavaScript knowledge.
Updating¶
Keep skills current
Polkadot Products surfaces are in active development. A skill that has not been refreshed for a while will teach the agent stale API patterns, which is worse than no skill at all. Refresh after major releases.
In Claude Code, update the plugin:
From a clone, pull the latest changes and re-register any updated skills with your agent:
Where to Go Next¶
-
Guide App Development How-To
The how-to guides themselves, the same conceptual content the skills above index into.
-
External product-sdk repo
The source of truth for the skills documented above, including per-skill README files and updates.
| Created: June 16, 2026