Developer Experience Improvements - Feedback from Real-World Usage

[paulgnz]

Developer Experience Improvements

Feedback and suggestions based on real-world development experience building Proton.Link and related smart contracts (protonwall, protonrating).

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1. WebAuthn Key Support - Clear Error Message (High Priority)

Issue: WebAuthn keys (PUB_WA_*) cannot sign transactions from the CLI, but there's no clear error message explaining this.

Current behavior:

proton action mycontract myaction '{}' myaccount
# Fails silently or with cryptic error when account uses WebAuthn key

Suggestion:

• Add clear error message: "WebAuthn keys cannot sign from CLI. Please add a K1 key to your account's active permission."
• Document this limitation prominently in CLI help/docs
• Consider adding proton key:check <account> command to verify if account can sign from CLI

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2. Misleading Success/Error Messages (Medium Priority)

Issue: Some commands show error messages even when they succeed.

Example encountered:

proton contract:set protonrating ./assembly/target
# Output: "Error: Inline actions already enabled"
# But contract was actually deployed successfully

Suggestion:

• Distinguish between warnings and errors
• Show clear success message with transaction ID when deployment succeeds
• Format: ✓ Contract deployed successfully (tx: abc123...)

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3. RAM Purchase Syntax (Low Priority)

Issue: The ram:buy command syntax for authorization isn't intuitive.

What I tried:

proton ram:buy account account 150000 account@active  # Failed

What worked:

proton ram:buy account account 150000 -p account@active  # Success

Suggestion:

• Accept both positional and flag-based authorization
• Or update help text to clearly show -p is required
• Consider making authorization optional and defaulting to the payer account

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4. Multi-Contract Context Safety (High Priority)

Issue: When working with multiple contracts, it's easy to accidentally deploy to the wrong account.

Suggestion: Add safety features:

# Option 1: Confirmation prompt
proton contract:set protonrating ./target
> You are about to deploy to 'protonrating'. Continue? [y/N]

# Option 2: Contract-account binding in config
proton config:bind ./protonrating-contract protonrating
# Then warn if deploying from wrong directory

# Option 3: Show current "active contract context"
proton contract:context
> Current: protonrating (last deployed 2h ago)

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5. Additional Nice-to-Haves

Table Query Output Formatting

proton table protonrating ratings --format=table  # ASCII table
proton table protonrating ratings --format=json   # Current default
proton table protonrating ratings --format=csv    # For exports

Transaction History Command

proton history <account> --limit=10
# Shows recent actions performed by/on account

Dry Run Mode

proton action mycontract transfer '{"from":"a","to":"b","quantity":"1.0000 XPR"}' sender --dry-run
# Output: Would transfer 1.0000 XPR from 'a' to 'b'
# Estimated CPU: 250 µs, NET: 128 bytes

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Summary

Suggestion	Priority	Impact
WebAuthn key error message	High	Saves hours of debugging
Multi-contract safety	High	Prevents costly mistakes
Better success/error distinction	Medium	Reduces confusion
RAM purchase syntax	Low	Minor friction

Happy to discuss any of these further or contribute PRs if there's interest!