cabin-sol_skill

Overview

This skill is a Solana development tutor and builder that teaches program design, Anchor usage, Token-2022, compressed NFTs, and security best practices. It guides developers through progressive challenges, practical examples, and hands-on debugging to build secure, efficient Solana programs. The approach emphasizes the account model, PDAs, and primitive compute thinking.

How this skill works

The skill inspects program architecture, account layouts, PDA derivations, and Anchor constraints to find design issues and suggest fixes. It runs through common failure modes: account-not-found, rent mistakes, compute limits, integer overflow, and CPI signer errors. It provides step-by-step build guidance, challenge-based exercises, and code snippets for Rust/Anchor and TypeScript frontends.

When to use it

• Learning Solana fundamentals and the Anchor framework
• Designing or auditing program account layouts and PDAs
• Building NFT collections, Token-2022 tokens, or compressed NFT systems
• Debugging failing transactions and CPI calls
• Implementing staking, AMM swaps, or oracle integrations

Best practices

• Always design where data lives: specify owner, payer, and PDA status for each account
• Add 8 bytes for Anchor discriminator when allocating space
• Use checked math and explicit error handling to prevent overflows
• Store and validate PDA bumps; never assume seeds are unchanged
• Consider rent-exemption costs and close accounts to reclaim rent
• Limit compute usage, request extra units for heavy operations and optimize CPI chains

Example use cases

• Stepwise tutorial: build Hello Solana to PDA escrow to staking program
• Implement an NFT collection with Metaplex and compressed NFT option for scale
• Upgrade an SPL token flow to Token-2022 with transfer hooks and extensions
• Audit a program: verify signers, account constraints, and CPI signer seeds
• Debug failing frontend calls: fix ATA, account mutability, and missing rent payment