This post reports completion of the scope under the Pop CLI Treasury proposal (Ref. 1619), and links to the relevant docs, examples, and deliverables.
Proposal Reference
- Proposal: Pop CLI | An All-in-one Tool for Polkadot Development
- Polkassembly: https://polkadot.polkassembly.io/referenda/1619
- Subsquare: Pop CLI: An All-in-one Tool for Polkadot Development
Milestone Roadmap
| Ref | Milestone | Status |
|---|---|---|
| M1 | Local Network Bootstrapping | Delivered |
| M2 | Forking live state | Delivered |
| M3 | Frontend Templates | Delivered |
| M4 | OmniNode | Delivered |
| M5 | State Lookup | Delivered |
| M6 | AI integration | Delivered |
| M7 | Contract Verification | Delivered |
| M8 | Maintenance, Quality & Support | Delivered |
| M9 | Distribution and UX | Delivered |
| M10 | Education, Growth & Alignment | Delivered |
M1: Local Network Bootstrapping
Launch a local relay network (Paseo/Kusama/Polkadot) with optional system parachains.
The pop up paseo --parachain asset-hub,people flow generates a network configuration for supported relay chains and spawns it deterministically.
Check out the docs and try it out: Launch a Known Chain | Chains | Docs
M2: Forking live state
Introduces pop fork, a command that creates instant local forks of any live Polkadot SDK chain (relay chains and parachains). The fork runs a fully compatible RPC server, enabling developers to test transactions, debug contract interactions, and simulate runtime behavior against real chain state, without syncing the full chain.
Check out the docs and try it out: Fork a chain | Chains | Docs
M3: Frontend Templates
Adds frontend templates alongside chain and contract templates, so teams can scaffold a working full-stack starter in one flow (chain/contract + minimal UI).
Check out the docs and try it out:
- Chains: Create a new chain | Chains | Docs
- Contracts: Create a new contract | Smart Contracts | Docs
M4: OmniNode
Integrates OmniNode as the default path for chain development, shifting projects toward a runtime-only workspace while using a shared polkadot-omni-node binary under the hood. This reduces the need to maintain node repos and shortens iteration time.
Check out the docs and try it out: Create a new chain | Chains | Docs
M5: State Lookup
Adds state queries for both runtime and contract storage, so developers can retrieve on-chain values without manually crafting storage keys or decoding SCALE.
Check out the docs and try it out:
- Chain constants + storage: Call | Chains | Docs
- Contract storage reads: Call | Smart Contracts | Docs
M6: AI integration
Ships the AI integration foundation via an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server (Pop MCP) that wraps Pop CLI workflows as callable tools for LLM clients. This enables agentic workflows like
scaffold, build, test, spawn networks, deploy/call contracts, and call chain extrinsics programmatically. Additionally, all commands now support a --json flag that returns structured output envelopes with typed error codes, making Pop CLI directly consumable by automation clients and AI agents without output parsing. Last, a pop-cli skill is written as well.
Check out the repo and try it out: GitHub - r0gue-io/pop-mcp
And the skill: pop-cli/.agents/skills/pop-cli at main · r0gue-io/pop-cli · GitHub
M7: Contract Verification
Adds pop verify to compare a locally built contract against either a reference .contract bundle or a deployed contract (revive-based chains supported), closing a major trust and UX gap for ink! teams.
Check out the docs and try it out: Verify | Smart Contracts | Docs
M8: Maintenance, Quality & Support
Continuous maintenance shipped as part of Pop CLI releases: bug fixes, regression handling, dependency upgrades, CI hardening, expanded tests, and ongoing template upkeep to keep the tool stable and production-grade.
Check out the releases we have done in the 6 months related to the proposal (v0.9 - v.014): Releases · r0gue-io/pop-cli · GitHub
M9: Distribution and UX
Improves installation and day-to-day CLI UX via packaging support and shell completion (pop completion), plus distribution via multiple channels (Homebrew, Debian packages + Ubuntu PPA, Arch Pacman, cargo-binstall, and Nix flake).
Check out the docs and try it out: Install Pop CLI | Docs
M10: Education, Growth & Alignment
Delivers documentation, guides, and onboarding material to reduce time-to-first-success, paired with ongoing community support and ecosystem alignment (Polkadot Hub, ink! Alliance).
Delivered activities:
- Updated documentation on an ongoing basis.
- Presentation at Buenos Aires sub0.
- 3 R0GUE engineers mentored the hackathon in Buenos Aires sub0.
- 2 workshops at the Polkadot Cloud Builder Party.
- 3 R0GUE engineers and Product Lead mentored the hackathon at the Berlin Web3 Summit.
- Consistent X content delivery.
- Extensive ecosystem advocacy for ink! & rust smart contracts.
- Usage dashboard on website: Pop.
- Quickstart video Tutorials for chain builders:
Extra work delivered
pop upgrade: upgrade your SDK dependencies following the release, usingpsvmunder the hood.pop clean: clean your locally spawned nodes, forks and networks.pop hash: gives quick hashing utilities from the CLI.pop convert: converts Ethereum and Substrate-style addresses in both directions.
Future Development
In the short term, due to the status of ink!, we will make pop-cli’s default installation only to include features that can be used for chain development. We believe the tool is super versatile and has a lot of useful features to help developers at Parity or the ecosystem in interacting with chains, forking and local network bootstrapping. Pop CLI can also be used alongside Solidity tooling for teams building on Polkadot Hub.