Programming Model

Inner Instruction

An instruction generated during cross-program invocation (CPI) that appears in a transaction's metadata as a nested instruction under its parent. Inner instructions are not declared in the original transaction message but are produced at runtime when a program calls another program via invoke or invoke_signed. They are visible in explorers and via the getTransaction RPC method's innerInstructions field.

IDinner-instructionAliasCPI Instruction

Plain meaning

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An instruction generated during cross-program invocation (CPI) that appears in a transaction's metadata as a nested instruction under its parent. Inner instructions are not declared in the original transaction message but are produced at runtime when a program calls another program via invoke or invoke_signed. They are visible in explorers and via the getTransaction RPC method's innerInstructions field.

Mental model

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Think of it as one of the core moving pieces your program reads, writes, or invokes at runtime.

Technical context

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Accounts, instructions, PDAs, transactions, and execution flow.

Why builders care

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Inner Instruction (inner-instruction)
Category: Programming Model
Definition: An instruction generated during cross-program invocation (CPI) that appears in a transaction's metadata as a nested instruction under its parent. Inner instructions are not declared in the original transaction message but are produced at runtime when a program calls another program via invoke or invoke_signed. They are visible in explorers and via the getTransaction RPC method's innerInstructions field.
Aliases: CPI Instruction
Related: Cross-Program Invocation (CPI), Instruction, invoke()
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Concept graph

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Branch

Cross-Program Invocation (CPI)

A mechanism for one program to call another program's instructions during execution. CPIs enable composability—e.g., a DeFi program can call the Token Program to transfer tokens. CPI depth is limited to 4 levels. The caller passes accounts and instruction data, and the callee runs with the same transaction context.

Branch

Instruction

A single operation within a transaction that invokes a program. An instruction specifies: (1) the program ID to call, (2) an array of account metas (pubkey, is_signer, is_writable), and (3) an opaque data byte array. Programs decode the instruction data to determine which operation to perform.

Branch

invoke()

The Solana SDK function used to execute a CPI without PDA signing: `invoke(instruction, account_infos)`. All required signers must have already signed the outer transaction. Use invoke when calling programs that only need signatures from user wallets, not from PDAs.

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Programming Model

Cross-Program Invocation (CPI)

A mechanism for one program to call another program's instructions during execution. CPIs enable composability—e.g., a DeFi program can call the Token Program to transfer tokens. CPI depth is limited to 4 levels. The caller passes accounts and instruction data, and the callee runs with the same transaction context.

Programming Model

Instruction

A single operation within a transaction that invokes a program. An instruction specifies: (1) the program ID to call, (2) an array of account metas (pubkey, is_signer, is_writable), and (3) an opaque data byte array. Programs decode the instruction data to determine which operation to perform.

Programming Model

invoke()

The Solana SDK function used to execute a CPI without PDA signing: `invoke(instruction, account_infos)`. All required signers must have already signed the outer transaction. Use invoke when calling programs that only need signatures from user wallets, not from PDAs.

Programming Model

IDL (Interface Definition Language)

Interface Definition Language—a JSON specification that describes a program's instructions, accounts, types, and error codes. Anchor auto-generates the IDL from the program source code. Client libraries (TypeScript, Python) use the IDL to serialize/deserialize instruction data and accounts, enabling type-safe interaction without manual encoding.

Commonly confused with

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Programming Modelcpi

Cross-Program Invocation (CPI)

A mechanism for one program to call another program's instructions during execution. CPIs enable composability—e.g., a DeFi program can call the Token Program to transfer tokens. CPI depth is limited to 4 levels. The caller passes accounts and instruction data, and the callee runs with the same transaction context.

AliasCPI
Programming Modelinstruction

Instruction

A single operation within a transaction that invokes a program. An instruction specifies: (1) the program ID to call, (2) an array of account metas (pubkey, is_signer, is_writable), and (3) an opaque data byte array. Programs decode the instruction data to determine which operation to perform.

AliasIX
Programming Modelinstruction-handler

Instruction Handler

The specific function within a program that processes a particular instruction variant. In native Solana programs, the entrypoint dispatches to different handler functions based on instruction data. In Anchor, each pub fn in the #[program] module is an instruction handler that is automatically routed to via the 8-byte discriminator prefix in the instruction data.

Related terms

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Programming Modelcpi

Cross-Program Invocation (CPI)

A mechanism for one program to call another program's instructions during execution. CPIs enable composability—e.g., a DeFi program can call the Token Program to transfer tokens. CPI depth is limited to 4 levels. The caller passes accounts and instruction data, and the callee runs with the same transaction context.

Programming Modelinstruction

Instruction

A single operation within a transaction that invokes a program. An instruction specifies: (1) the program ID to call, (2) an array of account metas (pubkey, is_signer, is_writable), and (3) an opaque data byte array. Programs decode the instruction data to determine which operation to perform.

Programming Modelinvoke

invoke()

The Solana SDK function used to execute a CPI without PDA signing: `invoke(instruction, account_infos)`. All required signers must have already signed the outer transaction. Use invoke when calling programs that only need signatures from user wallets, not from PDAs.

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Programming Model

Account

The fundamental data storage unit on Solana. Every piece of state is stored in an account identified by a 32-byte public key. Accounts hold a lamport balance, an owner program, a data byte array (up to 10MB), and an executable flag. Only the owning program can modify an account's data, but anyone can credit lamports to it.

Programming Model

Program

Executable code deployed on-chain, equivalent to a smart contract on other blockchains. Programs are stateless—they store no data themselves but read/write data in separate accounts they own. Programs are compiled to SBF bytecode and loaded via the BPF Loader. Every program has a unique Program ID (its account's public key).

Programming Model

Instruction

A single operation within a transaction that invokes a program. An instruction specifies: (1) the program ID to call, (2) an array of account metas (pubkey, is_signer, is_writable), and (3) an opaque data byte array. Programs decode the instruction data to determine which operation to perform.

Programming Model

Transaction

An atomic unit of execution containing one or more instructions, a recent blockhash, and one or more signatures. All instructions in a transaction execute sequentially and atomically—if any instruction fails, the entire transaction reverts. Transactions have a 1,232-byte size limit (matching IPv6 MTU) and a default 200,000 CU budget.