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guides: SNS inspection guide — how to query a live SNS and its canisters

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Assessment

Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Newbie friendliness
65/100
Issue type
Documentation
Clarity
Clearly specified
Activity status
Quiet
Domain
documentation

Research direction

Start with .migration/learn-hub/how-does-icp-work/sns/how-to-inspect-an-sns-and-its-dapp-canisters.md and the SNS governance Candid interface in .sources/icskills/. Replace the listed dfx examples with icp canister call, create docs/guides/governance/inspecting-sns.md, and add its Governance sidebar entry. Done means the six inspection tasks are covered with verified argument syntax and the technical-documentation and sns-launch skills have been loaded.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Background

The Learn Hub article "How to Inspect an SNS and Its Dapp Canisters" was evaluated during the Learn Hub migration (#208) and intentionally deferred. It was not part of the old portal docs either.

The staging file is at .migration/learn-hub/how-does-icp-work/sns/how-to-inspect-an-sns-and-its-dapp-canisters.md (marked out-of-scope in the final cleanup).

What the guide would cover

A practical how-to for developers building governance tooling or verifying a live SNS deployment:

  1. List all deployed SNS instances (query list_deployed_snses on the SNS-W canister qaa6y-5yaaa-aaaaa-aaafa-cai)
  2. List all canisters belonging to an SNS (list_sns_canisters on the SNS root)
  3. Get full canister status and controller hierarchy (get_sns_canisters_summary on the SNS root)
  4. Find an SNS root from a known dapp canister ID
  5. Inspect SNS governance neurons (list_neurons on the SNS governance canister)
  6. Check token balances (swap, treasury) via icrc1_balance_of

Why it was deferred

  • The Learn Hub source uses dfx throughout (banned in this repo). All examples would need to be rewritten for icp canister call.
  • The content was never in the old portal developer docs.
  • The audience is narrow: developers writing governance tooling or operators verifying their own SNS. Most of the canister hierarchy context is already documented in concepts/sns-framework.md.

When picking this up

  • Replace all dfx canister call examples with icp canister call.
  • Verify Candid argument syntax against the SNS governance Candid interface in .sources/icskills/ or the on-chain interface.
  • Place at docs/guides/governance/inspecting-sns.md and add a sidebar entry under the Governance section.
  • Load the technical-documentation and sns-launch skills before writing.
Dominant language
JavaScript
Stars
4
Forks
5
Avg merge
1d 5h
Merged PRs (30d)
36

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

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