Proposal: Canton Builder Navigator — Ecosystem Discovery and AI-Assisted Tool Matching

Development Fund Proposal Submission

Proposal file: /proposals/canton-builder-navigator.md

Summary

This proposal requests funding for Canton Builder Navigator, an open-source ecosystem discovery and onboarding layer for Canton developer tooling, public-good projects, and reference implementations.

It provides a structured catalog with machine-readable manifests, searchable discovery UI, AI-assisted intent matching for natural-language queries, and explainable recommendations showing how each tool helps and where it fits in a developer's workflow.

Checklist

• [x] Proposal file added under /proposals/
• [x] Milestones and funding amounts defined
• [x] Acceptance criteria included
• [x] Alignment with Canton priorities described

Notes for Reviewers

This proposal is scoped as shared ecosystem infrastructure, not a commercial directory product.

It addresses a specific gap: as the Canton ecosystem grows, the problem is no longer only "build more tools" — it is also "help developers quickly find the right tools, understand how they relate, and combine them into a working build path." This will help new developers find exact tool that can help them build their product faster

The main differentiators are:

• repository-backed catalog with version-controlled JSON manifests, JSON Schema validation, and CI-enforced quality — not a proprietary database
• deterministic discovery layer (keyword search, faceted filters, lifecycle views, developer journeys) that remains fully useful without AI enabled
• AI-assisted search built as a narrow retrieval-and-explanation layer on top of structured catalog data — not a general chatbot
• explainable recommendations that clearly separate structured facts from generated guidance, showing what matches, how it helps, where it fits, and what it does not cover
• open source under Apache 2.0