Week 33 · 2026

Highlights

A big cardano-init week

• We standardized in a shared Gift Card protocol and interface contract that lets any on-chain tool compose with any off-chain tool.
• The toolbox roughly doubled and then got wired together.
• We wrote a composable dev-shell flake that folds into the top-level --nix flake to be able to intrgrate Plinth as an on-chain tool (#46).
• Added Evolution SDK as an off-chain tool (#50).
• Added Tx3 as an experimental off-chain tool (#51). .tx3 transactions compiled by trix and resolved over TRP against a bundled Dolos devnet.
• The Scalus templates were reworked to the same Gift Card example every other tool uses (#48).
• Three hardening pieces followed: a contract-compliance test that walks every template in the registry and asserts the build/test/clean interface (#56); a doctor fix so it recognises real Tx3 projects rather than only our template copy (#58); and the experimental-tools opt-in gate (#43) merged over from last week.
• We shipped a data-driven off-chain ↔ provider compatibility gate (#52): off-chain tools declare the wire/interface they consume (blockfrost, u5c, ogmios, kupo, trp) and providers declare what they serve, so an incompatible pairing stops before generation instead of handing the user a monorepo that can't run.
• Every scaffolded project now emits a stack-tailored AGENTS.md (plus a CLAUDE.md bridge) that points an AI agent (or a human) at the interface invariants, the just workflow, per-tool docs, and the matching cardano-dev-skills (#55).
• The CLI got a full visual redesign (#57): a single theme, framed panels, aligned tables, spinners, and compiler-grade error diagnostics.
• Two more PRs opened for next week: pinning the network to preview with a CARDANO_NETWORK switch (#60), and add/remove project tooling with auto git-init (#59).

contracts-library (D5) kept its steady cadence (15 commits), with a PR opened to implement config parameter management (#32).

Cardano Foundation's Developer Portal (D4) saw another 6 commits of onboarding momentum.

On the Reactive track (D8), we upstreamed to cardano-dev-skills — the AI-agent knowledge layer that pairs with cardano-init — mirroring the same tools that landed in the CLI this week: the Plutus source was renamed to Plinth with its full user guide captured (#42), and a Tx3 source was added and wired into the tx-building skills (#43). A new suggest-scalability skill also opened (#41).

What's next: D3 keeps driving toward DX.02 (Aug 31) — the compatibility gate, contract-compliance test, and CLI redesign are the hardening that milestone needs, with the network-switch and tooling-editing PRs queued to land. D5's config-parameter work continues, and D1's hydra rework will bring the tracker in line with per-repo milestones.