Circle launched Arc Studio, a coding agent that employs artificial intelligence to write full-stack onchain applications based on natural language prompts.
The software generates front-end user interface code, back-end server code, test scripts, and smart contracts, allowing developers to go from initial idea to a testable onchain app without writing code.
Announced on Sept. 17, Arc Studio was released following the opening of Circle’s Arc Layer 1 network to the public. Studio was built specifically around Arc and Circle’s developer-focused ecosystem, rather than a general-purpose coding assistant.
When the user has described the application they want, the agent combines these components and makes the resulting code available for review and further development.
The framework works with Circle products like Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol, Gateway, Contracts and Wallets, and compiles applications for Arc, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Base, Ethereum, Monad, OP Mainnet, Polygon and Unichain. Studio can write Solidity smart contracts to serve dApps and exposes contract read and write functions both on the Studio interface.
Studio is also available as a subagent in IDEs along with Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor. Studio’s tracing system lets developers view the RPC calls, transactions, decoded events, and offchain HTTP requests made in their applications in real-time and then see what their applications were doing while testing.
USDC also fits with several of the use cases Circle is targeting. Studio can be used to prototype payment applications, wallets, swaps, bridges, lending products, staking, and programmable payouts.
Other use cases Circle specifies are cross-border payments, use-based software billing, and systems in which autonomous AI agents buy and sell services or computing resources.
Read More: How to Bridge USDC to Arc: A Step-by-Step Guide to Circle’s New Blockchain
The agent can also be integrated with decentralized finance (DeFi) infrastructure such as Aave, Morpho and Uniswap, allowing prototypes to build on top of existing DeFi offerings. Circle warns that the AI’s code may contain bugs, vulnerabilities or incomplete outputs that are in need of review and testing.
Studio does not sign, fund, or submit mainnet transactions during a user’s sessions. Developers must deploy to a production environment and handle credentials. Studio is used for live protocols and assets, application testing, and code generation.
The launch expands on Circle’s tooling following Arc’s public mainnet launch on Sept. 16. Circle says the EVM-compatible network uses USDC for paying fees and that transactions settle in under a second.
At release, over 100 applications and over 100 institutional and ecosystem builders had already onboarded, in addition to a founding group of validators from large financial and payments organizations.
Read More: Arc Ecosystem Is Live: 100+ Projects, BlackRock, Visa and the $10B ARC Question
Arc Studio is one of Circle’s developer tools and autonomous software infrastructure products, alongside Arc App Kits, Arc Portal, and Circle Agent Stack. Projects can be exported from Studio, allowing team members to review the code in Studio, pull code into their own private repositories, and deploy it using their keys and infrastructure instead of Studio.
