AI coding assistants can help accelerate development with the ArcGIS Maps SDK for JavaScript ArcGIS Maps SDK for JavaScript, previously known as ArcGIS API for JavaScript, is a developer product for building mapping and spatial analysis applications for the web. Learn more . These workflows cover common development tasks, including creating new applications, extending existing applications, upgrading SDK versions, and migrating between architectures and technologies.

These guides use AI coding assistants that can inspect project files, make code changes, and run development and validation commands. For applications that use AI to reason about maps, data, and geospatial workflows, see Agentic mapping applications.

Choose a starting path, then select the guide that matches the task you want to accomplish.

Choose a starting path

Small task

For a small, isolated change, provide the relevant context directly in your prompt. Project instructions are reusable descriptions of the app and development rules that guide the assistant across tasks. The full project-instruction template is optional.

  1. Ask the assistant to inspect the SDK version, framework, language, architecture, relevant files, and validation commands. Have it investigate unknowns instead of guessing.
  2. Describe one change with clear success criteria. Ask the assistant to keep everything else unchanged unless the task requires otherwise.
  3. Ask the assistant to run the shared validation checklist and report its results. Review the code and test the app in the browser yourself, including checks the assistant could not run, before committing.

For example, in an app with an existing layer filter:

AI prompt
Add a clear-filter control to the existing layer-filter UI in this app. First inspect the SDK version, UI architecture, filter implementation, and validation commands. Ask if more than one filter matches.
The control must clear only the user-selected filter, reset its UI, and restore the results allowed by the app's existing base filters. Disable it when no user filter is active. Use the app's existing UI patterns and preserve its SDK version, data sources, access settings, and remote items.
Run the relevant existing checks. In the browser, apply a filter, clear it, and confirm that the controls and results reset together. Check keyboard access and the disabled state. Report changed files, check results, and anything not verified.

Complex updates

For larger new apps, unfamiliar apps, upgrades, migrations, or multi-feature changes, follow Setup and validation for reusable project instructions, tool setup, and shared checks. Before editing, describe the app’s current behavior in the inventory file linked from your project instructions, and plan checks for the affected features.

Next steps

Follow the Setup and validation guide, then choose the guide for your task: