What is sunscreen?

⏱ 5 min read · 🎯 you'll understand: what sunscreen does, when to use it, when not to.

Sunscreen is a command-line tool for Solana developers. It scaffolds programs, manages a local dev loop, generates clients, and is extensible by plugins.

If you've ever written a Solana program, you know the friction: cargo, anchor, solana-cli, IDL generation, a frontend, a local validator, hot reload — five tools, five mental models. Sunscreen is one CLI that orchestrates them, with one config file (sunscreen.yml).

What sunscreen does

• Creates a new Anchor or Pinocchio workspace from a single command.
• Adds instructions, accounts, events, errors, or full recipes (CRUD, SPL Token, Metaplex NFT) to an existing program — without breaking what's there. It uses markers in your code to edit the same files safely on every run.
• Builds and watches in one supervised process: chain serve runs Surfpool (or solana-test-validator), watches files, rebuilds with Anchor, regenerates Codama clients, and tells your frontend to reload.
• Generates clients: IDL, JavaScript via Codama, React/Solid Query hooks — all deterministic, all idempotent.
• Onboards beginners: init, quickstart token|nft|dao|blog, embedded examples, wallet helpers, deploy plans, and actionable errors that tell you the next step.

When to use sunscreen

• You're starting a new Solana program and want a clean workspace in 30 seconds.
• You want a single tool that scaffolds, builds, runs a local validator, and regenerates clients on file changes.
• You like declarative configs (sunscreen.yml) over running 6 separate commands.
• You want the option to extend the CLI with plugins for your team.

When not to use sunscreen

• Your program is already deeply customized in a non-Anchor, non-Pinocchio workflow. Sunscreen targets these two frameworks.
• You need Windows distribution today — that's planned for v1.0 (see Roadmap). macOS and Linux work now.
• You want to manage validator clusters in production — sunscreen targets local dev. Use Helius or similar for prod RPC.

How it compares to Anchor CLI alone

Anchor CLI gives you anchor init, anchor build, anchor deploy. Great primitives. Sunscreen sits one level above:

Anchor stays under the hood. Sunscreen does not replace it; it composes with it.

Next

• Install it.
• Make your first workspace.
• Or jump straight to your first NFT in 10 minutes.