Multicanister Orchestration for IC

Orchestration & DevOps for the Internet Computer

MulticanisterOPS is an infrastructure platform that makes multi-canister systems practical: local & cloud Pocket IC environments, WASM versioning with metadata, automated installs/upgrades, autoscaling, and DAO-approved releases.

Pitch video Demo Slides GitHub

Quickstart

pnpm • Node.js • Pocket IC

npm i -g pnpm && pnpm install

export POCKET_IC_BIN=/path/to/pocket-ic && pnpm dev-pocket-ic-core

pnpm dev-icr-cli

Internet Computer Pocket IC SNS / DAO CI/CD WASM Versioning

Control Plane dev-cluster • Pocket IC

registry-factory

canisterId: aaaaa-aaaaa-aaa

healthy

branch: main

tag: latest

commit: latest

hash: 0x…33b

sns_governance

sns_root

icrc1_ledger

Activity

• uploaded factory.wasm • sha256 ok • upgrade
• created canister sns_governance • install ok
• resolved placeholders • init args encoded

What MulticanisterOPS is for

A platform for teams building complex IC apps — from local development to cloud testbeds and DAO-approved mainnet releases.

CI/CD for IC

Build canisters, version WASM (branch/tag/commit), auto-install/upgrade on Pocket IC, and prepare releases.

Unified environments

Identical dev/test/prod via core.json and environment.json — locally and in the cloud.

Scaling

Orchestration via registry-factory: sharding, replication, and routing by service names instead of canisterId.

Off-chain integration

Service discovery connects on-chain canisters and off-chain modules (HTTP outcalls) into one graph.

How it works

Step 1

Mono-repo

Canisters + off-chain modules + environment declarations.
Step 2

Build & version

ICR CLI builds, computes sha256, attaches branch/tag/commit.
Step 3

Deploy to Core

Upload WASM to Core Service → install/upgrade on Pocket IC.
Step 4

Orchestrate

registry-factory brings services up, scales, and routes traffic.

Key features

WASM as a Git artifact

Full metadata (branch, tag, commit) and build traceability.

Integrity

sha256 verification ensures what you built is what you deployed.

Declarative init

init_args in dfx.json + canisterId placeholders are resolved automatically.

Consistent environments

Local/cloud Pocket IC testbeds identical across stages.

Autoscaling

Replication & sharding of canisters, smart routing by service names.

DAO approvals

SNS-based governance for updates and parameters.

Tracing

Distributed logs/traces across canisters and off-chain (roadmap).

Core REST API

Upload/list artifacts, automatic upgrades/reinstalls.

Service discovery

Canisters talk by service names — no need to know canisterIds.

Architecture (high-level)

The Control Plane (Core Service + CLI) manages Pocket IC environments and orchestrates canisters via the registry-factory. SNS/DAO approves changes before shipping to mainnet.

Videos

Presentation slides are also available.

Who is it for

IC product teams

Building multi-canister products with growing audiences and loads.

R&D / prototyping

Spin up testbeds fast, run many versions in parallel, iterate off-mainnet.

Platform teams

Shared CI/CD practices, artifact version standards, unified orchestration.

FAQ

Does this replace dfx?

No. ICR CLI uses dfx for builds and some operations. MulticanisterOPS adds orchestration, versioning, and environment layers around dfx.

Can I run it in the cloud?

Yes. Pocket IC and the Core Service can run on Kubernetes/VMs. We are preparing GitHub Workflows for AWS/GCP.

What about production?

Targeting environment parity: develop/test on Pocket IC, release to mainnet through DAO approval with the same artifacts (sha256 matches).

Ready to simplify multi-canister DevOps?

Spin up a local Pocket IC cluster, connect the ICR CLI, and start versioning and orchestrating canisters like artifacts.

Open GitHub Quickstart