AI Friendliness

IC Reactor is designed to be highly compatible with AI coding assistants (like ChatGPT, Claude, and GitHub Copilot) and LLMs. This guide explains how to get the best results when using AI to build with IC Reactor.

context.txt

We provide a structured overview of the library at /llms.txt (located at the root of the repository). You can feed this file to any LLM to give it immediate context about:

• Core concepts (Reactor, ClientManager)
• Key packages and their roles
• Common code patterns for initialization and React hooks
• Best practices for type safety and transformations

You can download the context file to provide to your AI assistant:

AI Context File

Download llms.txt

End-to-End Type Safety

Since IC Reactor is built with extreme type safety in mind, AI assistants can easily infer the available methods and argument types for your canisters once you’ve defined the IDL factory.

Tip: Provide the IDL Factory

When asking an AI to write code for a specific canister, always provide the generated IDL factory (e.g., my_canister.did.js) or the Candid interface. The AI can then write perfectly typed useActorQuery or useActorMutation hooks.

Display Types (Auto Transformations)

To make AI-generated code cleaner and less error-prone, you can use DisplayReactor. This allows the AI to write code using standard JavaScript types (like string for BigInt or Principals) instead of specialized classes, which is what most LLMs are naturally trained on.

import { DisplayReactor } from "@ic-reactor/core"
import { createActorHooks } from "@ic-reactor/react"

const reactor = new DisplayReactor({
  clientManager,
  idlFactory,
  canisterId: "...",
})

const { useActorQuery, useActorMutation } = createActorHooks(reactor)

Prompting Examples

Setup

“Help me set up an IC Reactor actor for a canister with ID rrkah-fqaaa-aaaaa-aaaaq-cai and an IDL factory imported from ./declarations/my_canister.”

Data Fetching

“Show me how to use useActorQuery to fetch a user’s balance from a Ledger canister using IC Reactor hooks.”

Mutations

“Write a React component that uses useActorMutation to transfer tokens between two accounts.”

Tools and Extensions

If you use Cursor, this project includes a .cursorrules file that automatically configures the AI to follow the project’s specific coding standards and architecture.