N,O-Bis(trimethylsilyl)acetamide (BSA) is a colorless liquid with a boiling point of 71–73 °C/35 mmHg. It is extremely moisture sensitive and can also be rapidly contaminated with trimethylsilylacetamide and acetamide. The reagent is commercially available and can be prepared from acetamide with an excess of triethylamine and chlorotrimethylsilane (Scheme [1]).[¹] Since the early use of BSA in chromatographic analysis for the preparation of volatile trimethylsilyl derivatives, it has also proved to be useful in many synthetic applications.[²] At first, BSA has been used as a powerful silylating agent for the protection of amines, amides, carboxylic acids, alcohols, enols and phenols. In these cases, BSA is an attractive alternative to other silylating agents, such as trimethylsilyl chloride. Indeed, the reaction conditions are generally mild and neutral, and the byproducts are sufficiently volatile to be easily removed from the reaction mixture by evaporation under reduced pressure. It has also been used as a Brønsted base precursor in Tsuji–Trost reactions. More recently, it has been used to activate various functional groups during the formation of nucleosides, peptides and heterocycles to name but a few.